


Time Travel and Troll Grubs

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Grubbabies [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adoption, Earth C (Homestuck), Found Family, M/M, OCs/fantrolls, dave pls you can't adopt twenty kids (he already adopted twenty kids), my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art, so many of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 07:53:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 24,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12836631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: AU in which Dave has An Idea and follows through with it, leading to him and Karkat raising a shitton of grubs.Each chapter is semi-self-contained, so don't worry about cliffhangers or whatever. :0)There's now acompanion work,list of grubs, andreferences for the kids!MORE ART OF LITERALLY ALL THE KIDS(It's so so so good guys)





	1. How to adopt a troll grub(s)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave does the Time-y thing and brings home...well, more than he bargained for.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit...c'mon, dude, you gotta let go so I can figure out what I'm gonna do with all y'all..." 

Troll grubs do not, apparently, respond to slightly nervous coaxing. They're all chittering and squeaking, and even though you've picked up a little bit of Alternian from living with Karkat for this long you can't make even a little bit of sense out of it. They're scared, though, clinging to you like you're the only safe thing here. That's pretty understandable, though. 

You're rattled, yourself. The whole chain of events that led to this situation may have been a mistake. 

It's not your fault Karkat wants kids as bad as he does, though. Maybe it's your fault that you can't handle the thought of little Striders running around, but there's not much you can do about that. But you will take the blame for the idea of using the Time shit to go back and pick up some grubs that would've died on Alternia...even if a little bit of it came from Karkat talking about when he was little, and a little more from Kanaya having you go observe the care of the Mothergrub.

To be fair, you meant to take one grub. Maybe two. Probably not any, this first time, this was supposed to be to look and recon and come back later—you haven't even told Karkat about this idea, asked him if he was okay with it—but. Fuck. 

Those caves smelt like death and blood. 

It was too dark for you to see, which was probably a mercy, but you could still hear alien children whimpering and chittering and squealing, and every so often some unseen troll worker shouting in Alternian for them to shut up. 

You meant to stop, check you had the right place and time, and go home, but that fucking place...it froze you up, stopped you dead for what seemed like hours (but your time-sense promises you it was about eight seconds)—and by the end of that time the grubs had figured out you were there. How they knew you weren't some worker sent to cull them, you have no idea, but they climbed up your legs, clinging to you and sinking their claws in to stay put, trying to keep a grip on your shirt when you grabbed them and tried to hold them. 

Forty seconds. That's how long it took to grab this many, then you were fucking gone before anyone actually came to investigate the fuss you'd caused. And now here you are, sitting on the floor of your and Karkat's bedroom, trying to convince four or five of the two-dozen-odd grubs to let go of your legs. The one curled around your shoulders isn't helping either—it keeps digging its sharp little claws into your neck, which is worrying as fuck. 

The rest of the grubs are hiding under the bed, under the dresser, and in every little safe spot they can find. Which is also worrying—what if they get stuck? What if some of them're hurt? You need to get them out, check them all...

No, you need to calm the fuck down. 

The grubs on your legs slowly start loosening their grip when you stop trying to pry them off. You reach up to carefully adjust the one around your neck, and start doing what you're best at: talking. 

"C'mon, lil' guys. Come out here." A couple tiny grey faces poke out from various hiding places; they can understand tone at least. "Yeah, there you go...I'm not gonna hurt you, not gonna take you back there. I promise. C'mere." You're definitely not as calm as you're trying to sound, but it's still working—two grubs, one dark orange and one olive green, scuttle out, trying to crawl onto your lap and provoking a hiss from one of the grubs already there. "Hey, you quit that shit. There's room for all of you." 

The green grub trills when you pick it up and deposit it with the others, but the orange one wails and twists, trying to get away and doing a pretty good job of it. Luckily it only has a foot or so to fall and it lands nicely on your legs. 

There's orange blood on your hands, though, and when you reach down to run your fingers gently along the grub's side you find more wetness. It whimpers. "It's okay, dude, I—" And then it turns and sinks its teeth into your hand. "Fuck!" 

Okay, you're supposed to be being quiet. But you're also bleeding. 

The orange grub looks up and chirrups unhappily. There's a smear of your blood on its mouth. You sigh and pull your sleeve down enough to wipe that away, adding red to the rainbow of blood already staining it. 

"No biting," you tell it, and the rest of the grubs squeak in what sounds surprisingly like agreement. When you go to touch the orange one's side again, a dark blue grub squirms up to press the top of its head against its chin, effectively keeping it from reflexively biting you again. 

Damn, they're smart. 

The cut isn't that bad, just messy and long. It's shallow enough that you know you can wait to clean and bandage it. You pet the grub's head until it stops its sad squeaking, going silent for a second before producing a soft purr. 

"Ah, holy fuck." Once one starts, they all purr, and your lap's full of pleased, vibrating troll grubs. A couple more scramble up into the pile as you try to figure out how to react. 

You're trying to count them when the door slams opens. They all abruptly stop purring, and you yelp as many small sets of claws dig into your skin. 

"Dave—" Karkat stops dead, staring down at you in what looks kind of like horror for a moment before starting to splutter out bits of questions. "What the—how did—what the fuck did you—" He continues in that vein for a second before giving up and saying several sentences worth of rapid, incomprehensible Alternian. 

Half the grubs are trying to burrow into you (unfortunately), some of them are cooing and chirping in what seems like an attempt to calm you and each other down, and the orange one squeals challengingly and dashes forward before you can grab it, skidding to a halt in front of Karkat and chittering up at him defiantly. Karkat just stares at it in bewilderment for a few seconds, then bends down to take a closer look. 

"Dave," he says in that reasonable tone that means that you're in deep shit, "this is a grub. What the fuck did you do?"

"Uh." You could answer that. "Surprise?" Or not. "I can't take them back, man, they—" Okay, talking yourself out of this corner would be easier if your voice didn't just go AWOL at the thought of taking them back to where you found them. 

A lavender grub with the finned ears of a seadweller wiggles out of the pile, chirps at Karkat, and starts licking the tooth marks in your hand. Karkat shakes his head and picks up the orange one, ignoring its hiss as he cradles it to his chest and comes to sit on the floor next to you. "...holy fuck, Dave." 

"I'm sorry, okay?" A couple grubs are already crawling into Karkat's lap, despite your best efforts to corral them. "I—fuck, it seemed like a good idea at the time, I didn't mean—I was just gonna look, then talk to you, but—I couldn't leave them, Karkat, they were gonna die, do you get that, they—" 

"Dave. Stop." Karkat frowns at the smears of orange blood on his fingers, then shakes his head and turns his attention to you again. "Give me short answers, okay? Where'd you get them?" 

You actually choke on the words, and have to take a breath and start again. "...caves. On Alternia. I don't know the goddamn dates, but a long fucking time before you hatched." You can feel the caves, see them, in your head, and fuck but you're going to freeze up again. 

"The culling caves?" Karkat prompts gently. 

"Yeah." The grub that's been licking your hand nibbles gently on your fingers, and you pet its head, smoothing down the hair between the wavy horns. "Those." 

"You went back there and..." Karkat huffs in either confusion or exasperation, taking the lavender grub away and holding it up to eye level for a moment. When it chirps at him he shakes his head. "Yes, you're a fucking seadweller, we see you...isn't this going to fuck up the timeline?" 

"No." You don't have to think about the answer to that question; with the Time shit, some things you just know. "If you...take living beings out right before they'd die anyway, it doesn't change shit. Not unless the body's got a purpose to serve, and these guys..." Goddamn it, you're going to fucking cry again. "Well, guess they weren't important enough for that." 

Karkat mumbles something in Alternian, and exchanges the lavender grub for a pale-yellow one. "Okay." This one hisses and squirms, and he clicks at it, not looking at you. "How many." 

"Uh." Oh, you're about to be in trouble. "More than twenty." Of the three counts you took, you got twenty-three, twenty-six, and twenty-eight. You're pretty sure the second one was right, but you're not going to swear to it. 

Karkat blinks at you for a moment, ignoring the three grubs that are trying to squirm under his sweater. "Twenty." 

"Twenty-something." 

"Oh, Dave." There's a little smile on his face as he shakes his head, despite the dismay in his voice. "We're so fucked." 

"Yeah." You hold out your hands for the grub he's holding, but he just shakes his head again and cuddles it up against his chest. "Do. Do you want me to get rid of them? Some of them?" 

You're not going to take them back to the caves. That's never going to happen. But if Karkat doesn't want to take all of them, you're willing to take them away, somewhere safe enough, and fuck with time so you can take care of them and (hopefully) not have him know. 

But Karkat sighs and adjusts his grip on the grub so he has one hand free to reach over and pat your shoulder. "Don't be an idiot. Well, not any more of an idiot than you always are." He kisses the grub's forehead, and gets a messy lick in return. "Disgusting wriggler." It chirps happily. "I mean, this isn't exactly how I envisioned us having a family, but hey, it works...Dave, if you cry you're going to get them started too." 

"Mm. Too late." You sniff, free one hand to wipe your eyes, and pat the chirring grub on your shoulders. It rubs against your hand like a cat as you look over at Karkat. "So...we're dad?" 

He snorts, scoots close enough that the grubs on your lap can spread out into his as well, and wraps an arm around your shoulders. (The grub there lets out a purring hiss of displeasure, but relocates, sliding down to join the rest of the pile.) "We're dad. Or lusus. We're lusus?" 

"Nah, I want to make dad jokes." 

The look he gives you is disgusted amusement or amused disgust. "You're going to traumatize our children." 

"Just a little. C'mon, they'll love it." 

He returns your grin, then looks down at the grubs in your lap. "Yeah. They will." 

You guess you have kids now.


	2. Names

"Dude." 

"What, Dave." 

"You know what?" You wait until he looks up from the greenblooded grub he's soothing and raises his eyebrows at you before you grin and continue. "We got all these grubs, and no names for them. We gotta fix that, dude. Can't just spend—" 

"No." You honestly weren't prepared for the sheer level of snarl in that one word; that's full-on fight tones, what the fuck? And the look on his face matches too: angry scowl, eyes narrow, with the pupils wide enough to swallow the narrow band of red between them and the yellow. "We're not fucking doing that." 

The grub in his lap squeals in alarm, and the two curled up together in your lap hiss and scurry away, sliding off the bed and disappearing under it. They apparently have experience with angry adult trolls. 

"Karkat—" 

"No names!" The green grub dives for you at his almost-shout, and you catch it, cuddling it up to your chest as Karkat hesitates, opens his mouth to say something, then shakes his head and growls something that you don't understand in Alternian. "No fucking names, I—we're not naming them." 

You let him get up, partly because you can follow him and continue this where you won't scare the grubs, and partly because when he's mad enough he might just take a swipe at you. He isn't going to kill you, not permanently, but you know from experience that those claws hurt, and if he catches you across the throat...

Well, the grubs have probably actually seen someone die in front of them before, but you don't want to add a repeat of that experience. 

The green grub chirps anxiously at you as you nestle it next to a pillow, its face screwing up in what's probably fear. "Yeah, man, your troll-dad's pissed off. Not at you, I promise. Human-dad said something stupid." You're not sure what. "I'll go cool him down, alright?" 

Lil' green guy squeaks at you. You don't even know if they understand one word of what you're saying. 

"Yeah, I know. Don't talk so much I make him angrier, right?" You take another moment to ruffle the grub's hair until it chitters and butts its small, smooth horns against your hand. "Be right back." 

Karkat is in the kitchen, peeling an orange. He's on his third one; there's a pile of peels and another pile of mangled fruit on the counter in front of him. You wonder if he realizes that he's baring his teeth, growling out some quiet tirade in Alternian. 

"Hey." You're not going to touch him. That's asking to lose a couple fingers. "Dude, what the fuck? You scared the shit out of the grubs—" 

Okay, bad tactic. His shoulders hunch up and he tears a chunk of orange along off with the peel, fingers digging into the fruit. "Shut up." And, reluctantly, but with significantly less of a growl, "Sorry." 

"I mean, I don't need a sorry, I just want to know why you're freaking out over naming them. Y'all named grubs on Alternia, right?" 

"Yeah." He picks up another orange and starts peeling it, carefully this time. He's trying to calm down. 

"So why—" 

"Do you know how many grubs actually pupate, out of how many hatch?" Karkat's voice is very calm, but his hands keep working on his orange, and you can tell they're shaking just the slightest bit. He's furious, and you're more than a little worried. And scared. He almost never lashes out from pure anger, but then again he doesn't usually get this upset...you'd really prefer not to die right now. "You talked to Kanaya about mothergrubs and hatching environments and shit, you ever get on the subject of the fucking mortality rate?" 

"Uh..." Your instincts are telling you to take a fucking step back. Well, you're better than that, you can suppress your monkey hindbrain. "Never came up, honestly."

"Seven out of ten." He spits out each word like a curse, and when he looks up at you his eyes are full of tears that're already tracing red lines down his face. "Fucking—most of the grubs are going to die, I can't—we can't name them and then have them..." 

He snarls wordlessly and throws the orange he's holding at the sink, missing completely. It seems to more or less explode on impact with the counter. Karkat just stares at the mess for a moment, then pulls out one of the chairs at the table and half-sits, half-falls into it, propping his elbows on the table and covering his face with both hands. 

"Shit, man..." He huffs as you wrap your arms around his shoulders, struggling to control his breath and failing. "They're not gonna die." 

"Fuck you." His voice is muffled and wet-sounding, and all the fight's gone out of it. "Ka—Kanaya has hundreds of sweeps worth of hatch and pupation records, from Alternia and Beforus too...the average from the best twenty sweeps was about sixty percent survival. Sollux wrote a program to doublecheck my math, and his—it came out worse—" 

"Hey, shh." You're still not an expert at the delicate troll art of shoosh-papping him, but you're still going to fucking try. It does not make much of an appreciable difference. "Babe, I don't care if I gotta move the world, move the fucking universe, they're not gonna die." 

"There's no way you can promise that." 

"Fucking watch me." He relaxes just a little when you wind your hand into his hair, just barely brushing against one horn, but the shaking doesn't stop. "Kanaya has records, right?" 

"Mhm." 

"Think you can handle 'bout a minute without me?" 

"Yeah, but what—" 

The affirmative answer is all you need, though; you clear your mind and think about where Kanaya will be in six hours and you're there. Or then. 

She doesn't look surprised, and she's got a tablet in her hand, so you guess you must've told her you'd be coming. Do that when you get back. "Hey. I'm gonna assume I already asked the questions I was gonna ask before?" The hardest part of stable time loops is the grammar. 

"Of course." The sharp-toothed smile says it's good news. "Karkat isn't wrong about the mortality rate—" 

"God fucking damn it." The earth just dropped out from underneath you. Sixty percent. That means at least nine of the grubs, your fucking kids, are going to die. Nine. You can't handle this. 

Kanaya snaps her fingers in front of your face, and you blink. Rose had to have taught her that. "Dave, please focus." 

"They're gonna die?" Focusing is out the window right now, but you shake your head and try to pull yourself together for the moment. "Why the hell are you smiling?" 

She just shakes her head. "If you'd let me finish...yes, his figures are correct, but virtually all the deaths can be attributed to outside issues—lusii killing a rival's grub, injury, orphaning, culling for some defect that develops after adoption by a lusus—" 

None of which is going to happen here. 

Oh, god. 

Okay. 

"They're not gonna die." 

That bright, fanged smile again. "Definitely not. And please take the time to remind him that if they do—which is unlikely; we're much tougher than humans—we have two helpful Life players and one significantly less helpful one who can still be bribed to convert a dead grub into a live one—" 

She has a point, and you could probably do with listening a bit longer, but you want to tell Karkat right fucking now. "Thanks, Kanaya. I owe you." You give her a smile, she's opening her mouth to say something else, and you're gone again. 

Karkat used the minute you gave him to straighten up, push his chair back a bit more, and start scrubbing at his face with a square of paper towel. He's still sniffling, trying to hide it. You'd swear that you shut all the grubs in the bedroom, but there's a yellowblooded one chirping at him, trying to climb up his pant leg. 

"Hey. Babe. Kat. Karkat." You scoop up the grub and deposit it in his lap; he grabs it because it'd end up on the floor otherwise. "It's okay." 

The deathglare you receive is not totally unexpected, but he's holding onto the grub as it nuzzles into his chest, and his response isn't as angry or heartbroken as it could be. "Your definition of okay is definitely really fucking far from mine, Strider." 

"Nah, I think you're gonna count this as okay." The grub clicks and squeaks as you stroke its hair, and Karkat makes a deep sound as you do the same thing to him. "Talked to Kan. The death rate? That's because of environment, not 'cause of the grubs. And we've got a shitton of gods on our side, man—it's gonna take a major calamity to hurt our kids in any way that lasts." 

He just looks at you. Looks down at the grub. Blinks a couple times. 

Then he's really crying, full-out sobs, clutching the confused grub up to his chest with one hand and just grabbing you with the other, pulling you in like you're not much more than a grub yourself. He's going to crack your ribs again, but you wrap your arms around him anyway. You can definitely understand the level of relief he's feeling right now. 

Damn, now you have twenty-six names you need to come up with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah I'm just going to keep adding to this until I run out of ideas.
> 
> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)


	3. Of Slime and Baths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Dave is good about not texting you on the rare occasions that you feel the need to visit those of your friends that he doesn't always get along with. Well, usually he is. Today is one of the times when he proves that Dave Strider can never actually be predictable, though, because you're halfway through Legally Blonde 2 and you've only just finally got Eridan to shut the hell up and settle down when your phone starts buzzing. If it was just three or four texts you'd just ignore it and assume one of the grubs did something he thought you needed to see, but the beeping keeps up until Eridan sits up and raises an eyebrow at you. 

"Better give your human some attention," he suggests, his fins flaring just a bit. He may be trying to seem annoyed, but you can tell that he's as amused by this as he is by almost every interaction he gets to see between you and Dave. 

"Told you not to call him my human." Actually, you haven't, but Eridan just snorts and leans over to read the texts over your shoulder instead of pointing that fact out. 

"You've got grubs, dont'cha? You've been livin' in the same hive for sweeps—" 

"Years." Goddamnit, Dave. Twenty variations of "come home" and "we have a problem" is compelling but not helpful. "Not sweeps, years." 

"Yeah, yeah. You've been livin' together for years, you had your fancy ceremony thing—" 

"Wedding." You text Dave back, asking him what the fuck's going on, and wait for a minute. 

Eridan is still talking. "—so you had a wedding, you're human-married or whatever it's called, he's not your moirail or your matesprit or any quadrant I know of...he's your human, Kar. End of story." He nudges gently at your shoulder until you look up at him. "Go on, go check on him." 

"You sure?" He's got to know that you might not make it back over for a while if you leave now, and you know that he still doesn't really fucking know how to get anyone else to come hang with him. You hope for an affirmative answer anyway—Dave probably can't get in that much trouble, but you're still worried about him and the grubs right now. "I don't have to—" 

"Oh my gog." Eridan rolls his eyes and shoves you with what's got to be most of his strength; it's almost enough to rock you off the couch. "Go take care of your damn wrigglers, asshole. Pay me back by bringin' a couple to visit next time you come over." 

You don't need to be told twice. Well, actually you did, but whatever. "You said you hated grubs," you can't resist pointing out as you grab your shoes out from under the table and unlace them so you can put them back on. 

"Well." Eridan has the grace to sound more than a little embarrassed. You bet he's bright purple right now. "I say a lot of shit, Kar. Right now I'm sayin' those little guys are cute, okay?" 

"Can't argue there." You grin at him on your way to the door. "I'll do you one better—next time I'm coming I'll be dragging you over to our hive, you can visit all of them." 

"Fuck yes." Damn, he's almost purring as you shut the door behind yourself. Future reference: Eridan likes grubs a hell of a lot more than he lets on. Nice. 

In the ten minutes or so it takes you to get back to your hive, Dave doesn't text you at all. Well, if you weren't worried before you are now. At least there aren't any obvious signs of havoc—the door is still closed and in one piece, nothing seems to be on fire, there's no shouting or concerned onlookers...

Inside, everything seems to be in one piece, but Dave is not immediately apparent. Raccon is on the kitchen table, poking experimentally at a coffee cup that's been left dangerously close to the edge, with Taphri on the floor chittering admonishingly. You pick them both up, ignoring Raccon's hiss of complaint. "What did you two do with the idiot?"

You can't help the coo that comes into your voice when you talk to the grubs. It's embarrassing. 

"Don't tell me he locked himself in the attic again. Not even a Strider could manage that three times." 

Unsurprisingly, neither grub answers, since they can't actually speak yet, but Taphri squirms until you set them down on the floor, then scurries through to the hallway. They stop to circle there for a second, squeaking at you proudly. 

"Oh." Slime. It looks almost the texture and consistency of sopor, but there's smears of almost every color except the one that'd make sense for sopor. Raccon wiggles out of your arms as you bend down to check the stuff out, poking at a thick bit of slime and then licking it. "Oh my fucking gog, do not—" 

"Karkat?" Dave calls from somewhere in the direction of either the bedroom or the bathroom. Probably the latter, going by the loud splash and muffled curse that follows your name. "Maybe need a lil' help? Or something?" 

"Coming—" Raccon growls as you scoop them and Taphri back up and follow the slime trail to the bathroom and...Dave. Who's sitting on the tile, shirt discarded on the floor, soaking wet and more smeared with various colors of slime than the hall was. "Dave, what the fuck...?"

You haven't seen Dave this overwhelmed for awhile, either. He gives you a slightly-hysterical grin, grabs a grub that's about to escape the bathtub and puts it back in with the other six or seven paddling around in the now-multicolored water, and shrugs. "Do I look like I know what the fuck, Kat? Like three of them were sniffly and weird last night, remember, now they're, uh..." He raises his hands, wiggling slimy fingers in a gesture that you find highly disgusting. "This." 

"This." Taphri chirrs complainingly at you as you set them and Raccon outside the bathroom and shut the door, but they go quiet as Raccon nudges them back towards the kitchen. You strip your sweater and T-shirt off and sit down on the floor next to Dave, fishing a grub out and holding it up to examine. Holy fuck this shit is more slippery than any other bodily fluid you've come in contact with, and that's saying something. "Did you call Kanaya—" 

"Yep. Yeah, definitely." He's trying to wash one of the grubs with a soapy washcloth, but the others are all chirping for attention as well, pushing against his hands and sliding off each other, bouncing off the sides of the tub. You set the one you're holding down, capturing the orange grub—is that Novvem or Xiophi? It's hard to tell when their hair's wet—who's making a bid for freedom and returning them to the water with the others. "Apparently y'all get this like toddlers get the sniffles, I'm not really sure how common that is but going by the amount of snot I've seen Hal's kids produce I'm gonna say it's not life-threatening, but I dunno if it's normal to have seven oozing yick everywhere at once—" 

"Jegus fuck, Dave, calm down." You pick the orangeblood—yeah, it's Xiophi, Novvem's horns don't flip up at the ends like that—and deposit them on your lap, stealing Dave's soapy washcloth and starting to clean the slime off their thorax. They squeal and smile up at you, then shake their head furiously in order to get your pants as wet as possible. "That's how germs work. One gets sick, they all do." 

"Please god no." He laughs, leaning over to get another washcloth and just barely intercepting another grub—Lutien—as they try to slip over the edge of the tub. "No, babe, you're all icky—oh, fuck." There's a very loud splat as they manage to get out and into his lap despite his best efforts to the contrary. That fluffy albino-white hair holds water like a sponge. He shakes his head and starts cleaning them off and talking at the same time. "Oh my god—you dork. Anyway, if they all start sliming at once we're gonna need help. I mean I could time-loop but then again I'm a hell of a lot less coordinated under stress and this definitely counts as stressful and then time shit is more—" 

"Dave." He shuts up immediately at the sound of his name, grinning at you again. There's something really fucking funny about this situation, you can't explain what it is but the look on Dave's face proves that it's not just you. "We'll be fine. It'll be fine. No time shit, that fucks you up—"

"But—" 

"Sollux owes me, he can come help out." You swap the now-soapy-but-cleaner Xiophi for a still-slimy burgundy-blood. "John could—" 

"John's gonna throw up if he gets any of this on him and you know it." 

"It'd be hilarious." 

"True, but let's let the guy have a break, alright?" Dave finishes with Lutien and sets them back in the tub, considering for a minute before scooping out a greenblood, wincing as they nip his arm. "No biting! We've been through this..." 

"Okay, so not John." There's no blood this time, or you'd be scolding the grub. God knows Dave won't do it. "Eridan said he wanted to see them, he can come help out. Or Jade. Or Callie. Maybe all of them, I don't fucking know." 

You're definitely better than Dave at bathing grubs. He keeps almost losing the ones he's cleaning, whereas you can keep hold of them until you've scrubbed all the slime off. He gives you a disgruntled look as you put the burgundy back and grab a tiny teal who lets out an almost supersonic squeal of glee. That's the last unscrubbed one, though, and Dave puts his greenblood back and pulls the plug to let the water drain out, turning the shower on and bringing the showerhead down to rinse all of them.  
That provokes a chorus of squeals, of course. Every single grub wants to be the first to be under the spray, one yellowblood actually trying to grab the showerhead with their stubby forelegs. Dave just laughs, holding each one steady with his free hand as he rinses them off. 

"There we go, guys, that's a hell of a lot better, right?" It's funny that you can hear an echo of your own coo in his voice as he talks to them. "Getting slime all over me must run in the family, huh? You're a lot more polite about it than Karkat, though—" 

"Dave!" He yelps as you (gently) smack the side of his head, giving you an injured what'd-I-do look that doesn't fool you for a minute. "You make pail jokes in front of the grubs and you won't have anything to joke about until I forget you said it." 

"You never forget any shit I say." He pokes at your chest with one still-soapy hand. 

"Exactly." Damn, looking at him you realize that he's going to need a bath next—he has slime in his hair, for fuck's sake. That still doesn't stop you from smooching the cleanest patch of skin you can find, high up on his cheek. (And feeling slime under your lips. Oh, disgusting.) "C'mon, you got the soap off them. Let's dry them off, get them settled for a nap, and then we'll see about me giving you a bath." 

That earns you a grin, as he turns the water off and you retrieve the towels. "What happened to no pail talk?" 

"Dave, I love you, but you're gross. I'm not even thinking about anything until we fix that." 

"Fair enough."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's now a [followup!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090890/chapters/29948520)
> 
> Bath time was requested, bath time was written. (Possibly not exactly what you were thinking of but hey, I tried.) Also, just to clarify, all characters are or will be present on Earth C in this AU, I'm probably going to eventually write a severely angsty fic that clears up the mechanism for that but right now I'm just saying that yes Eridan is alive. If he's out of character I both apologize and point out that dying and coming back to life in a new universe mellowed him out a little. Also yes Hal has kids. Roxy built him an android body and he adopted like four. It's ridiculous. I love him. These end notes are too long, sorry.


	4. Beds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Karkat spends a good four hours fucking with the alchemizer, muttering at it in at least two languages and smacking it every now and then, but he manages to make what he says is the perfect multi-grub recupracoon. It's big enough to have a little separate pocket for each grub, with adjustable settings to change the sopor in each pocket to the blood temperature of the grub inside. 

You're proud of him and his hard work. 

Other than the seadwellers, who still need a liquid medium while they're sleeping to make sure their gills develop properly, none of the grubs use it. Your nightly routine now includes moving most of the pillows to make a bulwark against grubs tumbling to the floor, helping the ones who can't climb up themselves get on the bed itself, and spending twenty extra minutes getting them to settle on and around you and Karkat. It was pretty close to perfect in the first couple weeks after you brought them home, but they grow fast, and now...

"Babe. Kat. Love of my life." He's asleep already, isn't he. Damn your inability to bring up problems at a reasonable time. "Karkat. Dude. Grumpy crab dad." You carefully push Delphi to one side, petting their hair when they chirp softly in alarm, and reach back to shove at Karkat's shoulder. "Hey." 

"Dave, go the fuck to sleep." He groans and nuzzles at your back, clicking at Bowie and Lielin as they try to burrow into his hair at his movement. "Or at least be still and let me cuddle you so I can go to sleep." 

"We need a bigger bed." 

"We don't need a bigger bed. This is fine." 

"C'mon, man. 's not fine, the grubs don't fit right anymore." Raccon and Nonomi decide to illustrate that point by squirming out from the pile and climbing up onto you, squeaking encouragement at Ferrus as they try to follow. You love them, but having all three of them on your chest is more than slightly uncomfortable. 

"They fit just fine," he protests. After a moment he adds, maybe a little defensively, "It's troll nature to want to make piles. This is a good pile." 

"Babe, you're gonna wake up one morning and I'm gonna be in the process of dying from my own kids accidentally smothering me. Probably for the third time. Do we really wanna traumatize them like that?" On some level you're joking, but on the other hand the grubs do tend to get up on top of you and Karkat more now that there's less room. He can take it, something about troll respiratory systems and bone structure being built to take more stress than humans. You, not so much. "C'mon, I'm getting better at scaling shit with the alchemizer, we can just scan this bed and make it about twice as big—" 

"That's not going to fit, Dave." Myrmyr squeaks along with Karkat's words in perfect harmony without waking up, curling into a tighter ball to fit better between your arm and your body. "I'll agree to a bigger bed, but it still needs to fit in this room. We're not moving our shit into a different fucking bedroom, I swear to gog." 

"Okay, okay. Half again as big, that'll fit." All the grubs chirr and chitter at you as you roll over to face Karkat, grinning at him and scooting up as close as the multiple grubs in between you will allow. "And hey, we can take this bed and put it in the art room, have somewhere for John or whoever to sleep that isn't the couch when they come over." 

"You do have a point." Karkat smiles at you and kisses your forehead. As soon as he pulls back Grafii and Raccon try to copy him, leaving their own soft little kisses on your cheek before curling up around your head. "We'll do it tomorrow...now, seriously, go to sleep."


	5. Dirk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Dave is your bro. That makes his kids your...god, you have no idea what the gender neutral term for nephews and nieces is. You're not all that okay with saying that this state of things makes you an uncle, though. It's not that you don't think the grubs are some kind of amazing—they definitely are—but something about applying a label that's meant to describe a type of relation with and to kids to yourself? That fucks you up a little. 

Hell, you haven't even managed to bring yourself to touch one of them, beyond very gingerly untangling a dusty orange grub from a blanket in the living room. It made noises at you the whole time, too, and you spent that ninety seconds or so lowkey panicking over what exactly the chirping sounds meant. What if you hurt it? It's entirely possible you could've, you know that, you don't understand troll grub anatomy well enough to know if they have an equivalent to a fontanel or whatever. It was definitely a relief when Karkat came in and took the grub away from you, allowing you to escape to the kitchen. 

There's more grubs in here, of course, but Dave's got a pretty good handle on shit. And he's also willing to give you tasks to do so you're not just standing there like an idiot, unlike Karkat. So you're slicing up apples, being very careful not to step on the three grubs that're rubbing against your legs, and listening to Dave run his mouth as he puts away dishes. You don't know how he's doing all that and holding a grub at the same time. 

He actually shuts up about half a second before the stack he's trying to move hits the floor, almost all of them shattering. "Ah, fuck—hold this—" 

"Wait—" You protest a little bit too slow, because "this" is the chittering, pale yellow grub, and Dave's already shoved it into your arms before you can do more than drop the knife you were using on the counter. "Dave—" 

"What?" He's on his knees, picking up the larger chunks of ceramic and dropping them into the only non-broken bowl. Thankfully he's not looking up at you, because you're pretty sure you're doing a shitty job of appearing not to panic. "Lielin? They'd get all up in this shit if somebody wasn't holding them, trust me. Just give me a minute to clean this up—"

"Or you could take the grub and I'll deal with the mess?" You're pretty sure you're not holding the grub—Lielin—properly. Don't babies have to be held a certain way? Oh, god, you can't adjust your grip without worrying about dropping them, though... "Dave, stand the fuck up and take this kid, I swear to god." 

Okay, you can hear the panic in your own voice. 

Dave must hear it too, because he sits back on his heels and looks up at you. The look he gives you is a hell of a lot more patient than you probably deserve at the moment. "Calm the fuck down." 

No chance of that. Absolutely none. "I am going to drop them." 

"You're not going to drop them." 

Lielin chirps in agreement and squirms a bit, nuzzling into your shirt when you automatically pull them up closer so they don't slip out of your grip. They don't seem to realize how dangerous the position they're in right now is. In fact, they look up to give you a fanged grin. 

"Dave..." 

"Dude, I trust you. You're not gonna hurt the grubs." He shrugs, going back to gathering the remains of the dishes. "You're okay. Lielin's okay, they'd be screeching their head off if they weren't..." 

"Ever consider maybe they're paralyzed by fear?" They chirr at you as you say that, starting to purr. This grub has no sense of self-preservation. "I—" 

"They like you." Dave gets up, dumps the bowl of broken crockery in the trash, and steps over to you. Unfortunately, instead of taking Lielin, he just gives them a quick pet and pats your shoulder before continuing over to snag the broom. "Grubs can tell who's safe and who's not, it's like a survival thing. You're okay, Dirk." He's looking down at the floor instead of at you, gently pushing one of the grubs that've been crowding around your feet back when it tries to come investigate the broom. "You should sit down, though. Otherwise the rest of 'em are gonna try to climb up your jeans eventually." 

"Uh." Well, shit. You don't want to move your feet for fear that you'll step on a grub, but they move back when you take a cautious step towards the table, giving you room to make your way toward a chair and sit down in it. As soon as you get Lielin settled on your lap, the other three start trying to scramble up. Oh, fuck. "Dave—" 

He looks over at you. "Dirk, you're not gonna break them." 

"I—they're going to—" 

"Oh my god, give me a second." He just shakes his head, leaning the broom against the counter, pouring the shades he's swept up into the garbage, and coming over to sit in the chair next to you. "Relax." 

Not a chance. "Who's not relaxed?" 

Dave shoves his shades up on top of his head so he can roll his eyes at you. 

"...okay." 

"That's what I thought." He grins, then reaches across to grab your wrists, pulling your hands down from the awkward spot they're hovering in and putting them firmly on two of the grubs. The grubs immediately start purring. "Look, I know Roxy's made you catsit before." 

"That's got nothing to do with this—" 

"Bear with me, man. I've seen you with animals, you don't lose your shit like this around them." 

"These aren't animals, these are your kids—" 

"Yes, they're my kids, but they're tough lil' guys, I promise you're not gonna hurt them on accident." Dave leans back, watching you gingerly pet the grubs for a moment, then grabs the dark red one that's making an attempt at escaping, cuddling it up to his chest. "And I know for a fact you'd never hurt 'em on purpose." 

You don't have a response to that. You really don't. 

The green grub in your lap butts its head against your hand until you actually start stroking its head, making quietly satisfied yipping sounds when it gets what it wants. Lielin is trying to squirm up under your shirt. The last one, a purplish guy with finned ears, is licking your hand. 

Okay. You can handle this if they can, especially if you keep reminding yourself how resilient you know adult trolls are. You have this under control. Your hand's completely covered in grub drool, but you've got this. 

"So can I put you on the list of potential babysitters then?" 

You almost panic again before you look up and see the half-hidden grin on his face. "Give me some more practice first." Okay, you're surprising yourself with that answer. "Then yeah, maybe." 

"Awesome, I'll make sure everybody knows they gotta drag you over as often as possible so you get to play with them." He sets the red grub back in your lap, laughs as you freeze for a second, and heads back to finish putting the remaining dishes away. 

So. You have a lapful of grubs and the promise of a few weeks of everyone you know forcing you to come interact with them pretty much constantly. 

It's nice to know that it's possible for you to be both this intensely nervous and completely excited about something at the same time.


	6. Kankri

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Both your dancestor and his quadrantmate have repeatedly informed you that if you need to speak to them in person during reasonable daylight hours, the accepted manner of accomplishing this is to come to the door and knock. You've been further instructed that waiting for more than five minutes or so for an answer is not polite but "fucking stupid" and if there's no immediate answer and the door isn't locked, you're expected to just come in. 

They've both said it more times than you care to count, but entering someone else's dwelling without confirmation of permission is still very strange. Today is even more strange, because you do as you've been told, knock and wait and come inside—carefully closing the door behind yourself—and turn around to see something wholly unexpected. 

"Oh." 

That is a grub. You've never seen the young of your own species in person before, but you've read about them, and you can certainly recognise one when you see it. This one's a highblood—no, that's not an acceptable term even in the privacy of your own head—a blueblooded troll grub with one blunt horn and one hooked, big enough that you'd guess it's not too far off from its first pupation, although you can't be wholly sure due to the fact that its hair is ridiculously long, enough to cover a good portion of its body. 

It looks up at you and chitters inquisitively. A second and third grub skitter out from the door to the kitchen, all three of them converging at your feet and rubbing against your legs. 

"Oh dear...hello, there." You kneel down to examine them closer, taking a moment to note that the newcomers are olive and teal. The teal has finned ears that remind you of Cronus—but that's the wrong caste for seadwellers, you know it is. "I'm aware that you're not capable of verbal consent, but if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable or could be considered a trigger, please be aware that I'm willing to stop said action as soon as you provide any sign that it's distasteful to you..." 

The teal grub squeaks and starts purring as you gently reach down to run your fingertips lightly along their neck. Oh, yes, those are gills. There's a thin chain around their neck, too, with a engraved charm on it, and you read the inscription out loud. "Rahnza..." 

You get a louder chirp and a nod from the teal. That must be their name, then. On further inspection, the other two also have charms—Arreis for the blue, Taphri for the olive. Taphri is trying to climb into your lap as you examine the charms, and when you look up there are three more grubs coming toward you. 

Of the five investigative questions, you have the answer to precisely one—these are Dave and Karkat's grubs, going by the fact that this is their hive and that's the logical explanation. You suppose that "what" doesn't need to be answered, either. Grubs, that's what. But when exactly did they acquire six—no, seven—nine—

For the love of all that's holy how many are there. They just keep coming out from various hiding places, and they all seem to want to sit on your lap or have you hold them. You're not entirely sure you can do that, but when Taphri gets their claws caught in your sweater you have to gently untangle them, and cradling them up to your chest seems to be the right thing to do. 

What were you saying again? 

"Well, we settled who, we know what, when is still in question." Surprisingly, you get a chorus of answering chitters when you start talking, and most of the grubs surrounding you and nudging you gently with their heads look up attentively. "Why is also in question—I've never been aware of anyone raising more than four grubs at once. Not even lusii." Although if anyone can, it would be your dancestor and his slightly-insane-by-normal-standards quadrantmate. "I've skipped where, haven't I? Apologies. Then again, it's entirely possible they created all of you in the normal fashion. Or something like the normal fashion." 

Not that there is a normal procedure for cross-species reproductive relations. Of course, you're aware that with a bit of teamwork on the part of the several Hope and Life players it's entirely possible to temporarily or permanently change species—Cronus spent half a sweep as a human—but you doubt that Karkat or Dave would choose that route unless it was out of pure curiosity. 

"And of course I don't see how their genes would combine to create such a wide sampling of the hemospectrum," you tell the grubs that are curling around you and each other. Are they purring? They're purring. "Even the hypothesis of genetic wildcards creating diverse offspring wouldn't exactly explain—ahh." 

A purring grub, smaller than most of the ones here, has somehow managed to make its way up under your sweater, curling against your skin and nuzzling you. Not many things strike you speechless, but you do believe you've just found one. It's been a very long time since someone touched you skin-to-skin (or skin to tough grub carapace, in this case) without much warning and your explicit permission. You think you might have not died yet last time it happened, and that experience was extremely upsetting. 

This is, oddly, not upsetting. 

All of the grubs—how many? You've lost count—are purring, individually much quieter than an adult troll but substantially louder together. You are also purring. Shamefully loudly. Cronus would be laughing at you. Speaking of Cronus...

"I'm going to have to bring Cronus to see all of you," you tell them, absently noting the odd gentle tone in your voice. Definitely not how you sound normally. "I think I'm going to have to bring almost everyone I know to see you, if your lu—if Dave and Karkat don't object. Do you know just how amazing you are?" 

The chirps and squeaks that you get in response indicate that yes, they may have some idea. There's an actual royalblood—you realize that the term may be offensive but that color is so very close to Meenah's that you're in some stage of awe and it's not like you'd ever say it out loud so you will forgive yourself this once—trying to untie your shoelaces with its teeth. If you squint you can see that its charm says "Zandyr." 

"Ah—Zandyr, can I request that you stop that, please—" 

They squeak defiantly before you finish your sentence, tugging a little more emphatically. A dark orange grub slides out of the pile on your lap, though, growling at Zandyr, and everything that you've ever read about grubs mauling each other flashes through your mind. 

"Wait, don't—" 

But Zandyr just hisses back, and instead of biting the orange one headbutts them hard enough to knock them a good foot back from your shoes. You wince, expecting another strike and trying to figure out what to do with the armful of grubs you already have so you can grab both participants, but that's as far as it goes. Zandyr whines and crawls onto your lap, curling up to a yellowblood you've identified as Lielin and starting to chew on the end of one of the braids that Lielin's hair's been secured in. 

You free up one hand and scoop up the orange grub—Ferrus, now that you can read their charm—cuddling them along with all the others. "Thank you for the intervention, Ferrus. Also for your admirable restraint in keeping violence to a minimum—aside from the consequences of being overly rough including trauma and risk of death, I think Karkat might really kill me if he found out I let any harm come to his children." 

Hm. You're fairly certain that children is a human term, and you're opening your mouth to clarify that you're not implying that the grubs in your lap are actually human when Karkat himself speaks up from somewhere just out of your line of sight. 

"You're probably right, but Dave would throw a fit, so no dying in this house." He sounds amused instead of his usual state of annoyance, at least, and the look on his face bears that out as he steps to where you can see him, looking down at you. "Fuck, they like you almost as much as they like Arquius." 

"I'm not sure if I know why." Oh dear. You're still purring. You try to stifle it and look down at the grubs in your lap to conceal the immediate, vibrant blush that you can feel spreading across your face. "They seem to enjoy my talking, but on the other hand they were already trying to make my acquaintance before I said anything." Do you have both the purring and the blushing under control? Maybe. You look up at Karkat anyway. "I didn't know you were collecting genetic material. Or planning on combining DNA through mechanical means." Oh gog you have never managed to be this tactless and potentially triggering in your life. "Um...I apologize?" There's the blush again. 

Karkat blinks, opens his mouth, closes it again, and sits down on the floor next to you. "There's a grub in your sweater," he points out instead of addressing any of the asinine points you just made. 

"Oh." You'd gotten used to the little grub, but they've made their way up to your neck now, squirming to get comfortable nestled in your turtleneck. You look down and for a moment you can't read their charm because that...that is a limeblood. To the best of your knowledge limebloods are extinct. "They're fine. You have very sweet children, Karkat." Grafii. Grafii is in your sweater. 

"Fuck yeah I do." He grins, a brighter expression than you've ever seen on his face, taking Taphri out of your lap and kissing the top of their head. "Maybe it's because they're adopted, I don't know." 

Ah. "...um, might I ask why in the name of all that's holy you adopted so many?" 

He shrugs, and as even more grubs come out from hiding places to curl up on your lap and his, he explains about time travel and how Dave's proclivity to occasionally bring things back combined with some kind of strange lusus-like instinct, with the grubs being the end result. You keep your mouth shut for his explanation, but you still catch yourself purring a few times. For whatever reason, Karkat doesn't call you out on it. 

When he's done you do have a question, though. Possibly an idiotic one. 

"So are you looking for a..." Oh, what's the word? It's a human word. Ah. "A babysitter?" 

Karkat laughs, reaches over to pat Grafii's head, and nods. 

After much more discussion and instruction you depart with knowledge of how to care for grubs and, amazingly, a grub to apply it to. Karkat said you have to bring them back tomorrow or the next day, but at the moment you are the foster lusii for a very comfortable limeblood grub, currently nestled in your sweater. 

You can't wait to show Cronus. And Aranea. And Rufioh. And everyone who has the luck to cross your path in the near future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just discovered that writing Kankri is surprisingly fun. Huh.


	7. Myrmyr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, a chapter from the point of view of one of the grubs! Also post-pupation and with Rose and Kanaya making an appearance, which I think a couple people asked for. Uh, italics indicate a character talking in sign language for this chapter. Myrmyr is deaf, but they're also telepathic and can "hear" by picking up what people around them hear.
> 
> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Your name is Myrmyr Vantas-Strider. Strider-Vantas. Stridass. If you claim your name is Stridass you can make Dave spit coffee everywhere, at least that's what happened last time. You should really say it when Karkat's in the room too, maybe he'll do something interesting? The worst case scenario would be a repeat of the coffee thing, and that's a good outcome for you and your friends. 

You have very, very many small friends—not to be confused with your hivemate-friends, even though some of them still have the same number of legs as your small friends they're still bigger and even though you can hear what they hear you can't make them hear you without using your mouth. Dave calls your small friends ants and asked you to tell them that he wants them to live outside instead of inside, which you don't really get because can't he tell they're friendly and just want to be near the food and electricity? But you still make sure they stay outside, mostly. Unless, of course, they have a chance to come clean something up, like creamy sugary coffee or crumbs that fell on the floor. Or when you want to talk to them. 

This is the big problem with you—you have a habit of forgetting what you're thinking about and going on a tangent. There is a definite reason you're in the kitchen, Karkat just told you what it was but then you got distracted by thinking about your name and coffee and ants—wait, no, ants are what you're supposed to be thinking about, just not friend-ants, people-ants, the kind of ants that aren't ants at all but Dave says they're called that anyway but when he says it with his hands it's entirely different than the kind of ants that are ants—

_Stop. Stop. Stop. Calm down, Myrmyr. Focus._

You ask Karkat when Rose-and-Kanaya-ants are coming, with your mouth. You're talking to yourself with your hands, reminding yourself that you're supposed to focus on one thing at a time instead of the three or four you're aware of because otherwise you do things with the thing in your mind that's hand-said one way and mouth-said two more ways (because Sollux hand-says it like everyone else but mouth-says it completely differently.) You need to ask Kurloz about all the different ways to say things. He has an extra way to talk to you, like you talk to the ants, and being able to hear with your head what you can't hear with your own ears usually clarifies language-things you don't understand. 

Karkat taps your shoulder to get you to stop zoning out and look at him. _They're in the art room,_ he says with his hands. _They brought gifts; you should go see._

You hear your own excited squeal because Karkat does, and apologize with your hands and your voice for being that loud as you back out of the room. 

Rose and Kanaya are in the art room. So are Grafii, Fenrir, Corvid, Delphi, and Dave, who's got Enigma in his arms and—nope, uh-uh, loud, loud loud loud, that's too many voices from too many minds at once, you want to see what they brought but the sudden cacophony in your head actually hurts—

Grafii steps over and wraps their hand around one of your horns, and the noise narrows down to just what your limeblooded sibling's hearing instead of what everyone's hearing. With that reduced input, you realize you're whimpering and stop, and tell them thank you with your hands. They just grin and pull you over to the table. 

_You have paint on your face_ , you say with your hands as Delphi reaches up to touch your other horn so you can hear anything Grafii says too. 

"I was painting, what do you expect?" Grafii rolls their eyes at you and nods at a package wrapped in shiny yellow paper on the table. "There's presents, that one has your name on it." 

Rose nods when you glance up at her, pushing the package across the table to you. Under the paper it's soft and yielding, fascinatingly nice to poke at with one hand as you talk to Delphi and Grafii with the other hand. _You got presents too? What were yours?_

Grafii's entire face lights up with excitement and they point over at the wall where Dave pins up photos of their favorite paintings. "Kanaya took the picture I made of dads and made a sweater just like it! Wait 'til you see, it's the best thing, I love it!" 

Delphi just points at themself. They're wearing a new sweater, one that looks really really soft and is a shade or two more grey than the blue of their blood color. The symbol they picked out for themself, a blocky outline of an equilateral triangle, is appliquéd on the front with some smooth, black fabric. 

"Nice! Pretty!" You say it with your mouth because both your hands are busy tearing the paper on your own gift. You want some of this paper, it holds folds in a way that you're not used to and is different on either side, shiny yellowy gold and flat white, and through Delphi's and Grafii's ears it makes a fascinatingly rough sound as you crumple it in your hands—

"Perhaps we should have given Myrmyr a ball of wrapping paper wrapped in more wrapping paper instead of their actual gift," Kanaya points out, and you remember that you're supposed to be unwrapping something, not just giggling at crinkly paper. 

You still set the paper aside very carefully, sweeping the discarded pieces from everybody else into a pile. _I want that_ , you tell Grafii with your hands, and poke Corvid to get their attention. _I want that, you can't have all of it, okay?_

"How about we share?" Corvid suggests instead. 

_Maybe. If it's fair._

Your gift is actually two gifts, one wrapped up in the other, and you can hear yourself make happy wordless sounds as you untangle them and hold up a white t-shirt—you love white things so much! You don't have a lot of them because you absolutely ruin them if you're not careful—with six or seven yellow and red ants appliquéd onto it. Oh, they're soft, too, soft and a little bit bumpy like Rose knitted them and Kanaya sewed them onto the shirt. 

You hold the shirt up for Dave to see and try to say something about how awesome it is. Predictably, your words come out completely garbled, like they always do when you're excited, but he gives you a thumbs-up anyway. There's a line of ants on the far wall, carrying off little bits of a cracker that somebody dropped, and you tell them to look at how you have a shirt with them on it. They're substantially less impressed, but glad you're happy. You don't think ants know what ants look like, now that you think of it. 

"Thank you," you say, looking between Rose and Kanaya, and say with your hands, _I love it, I love it so much, it's perfect._

Grafii giggles and relays that to Rose and Kanaya as you pick up the other thing that was in the package. This one takes a minute of examining to make any sense whatsoever out of, but once you realize that the two holes in the dark yellow knitted bowl-shape are spaced exactly like your horns, you realize that it must be a hat. 

Delphi and Grafii let go of your horns so you can put the hat on—now that you're expecting the echoey eightfold version of every sound in the room, you can cope with it. Probably. Definitely. It's funny how sometimes you can handle lots of versions of sounds and sometimes you can't. Today must just be a bad day for that, because both of the feathery Daves-that-aren't-dad-Dave—Davesprite and Davepeta—and Arquius, and Hal (who's neat to be around because he can do something that makes it so you can hear him even if he's the only one in the room with you, whereas most people will let you pick up all aural input from their minds except for their own voices) were all here earlier to pick up those of your siblings that are still grubs, and you had to go hide in the other room until they all left because otherwise you were going to cry. Even right now you're almost ready to put off trying on the nice soft knitted hat Rose made for you until later because everything is so loud you can't think how to get it over your horns—

Fenrir shakes their head, says something that you can't sort out from all the sounds bouncing around your skull, and reaches up to tug the hat down over your horns, settling it on your head. For a minute you can't think out of sheer surprise. All the noise is still there, you can still hear through everyone in the room, but it's suddenly oh so very much quieter, enough that you can catch the end of Fenrir's sentence. 

"—they're hard to get over your horns." They take a step back out of arm's reach, cocking their head slightly. "Better?" 

"Better." _Very much better_ , you say with your hands at the same time. "Rose?" _It's quiet._ "How'd you make it do that?" 

She looks confused for a moment, before Corvid relays the parts that you said with your hands to her. "It's something Eridan thought of, actually—contact with a psionic's horns can mute ability to some extent. Now, you can't wear it all the time—

_Why would I want to do that? I like hearing what other people hear. Usually._ This time it's Fenrir that translates for Rose, even though she's looking at your hands this time and might not even need it. 

" Exactly. But when you want to have things be quieter for a while, the hat should be useful." 

"Thank you," you say, and with your hands you add, _I love it, it's perfect, you're sweet._ "Love you, Rose. Love you, Kanaya." 

That starts a chorus of the rest of your siblings agreeing, and Dave's laughing because when you go to hug Rose so do Grafii and Delphi and Corvid (Fenrir takes a quick step back; they don't like hugs) and for a minute all four of you resort to grub-talk with each other, growling and chirring and squeaking for the others to make room, my spot, scoot over. Kanaya holds out a moment longer than Dave before she starts laughing, which is a reminder that she deserves a hug too, and now Rose and Kanaya and Dave are all laughing and you're laughing and your siblings are laughing, and wow this is the best sound ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good ant child is good


	8. Pupation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

You're making an attempt to fix soup without leaving any of the ingredients out when Dave comes into the kitchen, moving quietly enough that you know he's really fucking upset, or scared, or both. There's a knife in your hand, and you set it down as carefully as possible in the second before he grabs your wrist. 

"Dave, what—" 

"N-no, co—come on, Karkat, please, f-fuck—" Dave's pulling at you, stuttering so badly you can't understand more than one or two words at a time. You haven't seen him this desperate, this terrified, in a very long time, and now you're starting to get scared. Actually, scratch the "starting" part of that sentence, "scared" can stand on its own, might even be a little weak for what you're feeling right now. 

Dave was supposed to be waking up those of the grubs that actually took naps. Thus, you can assume this is about one of the grubs. 

Okay, you know that Dave's going to have a meltdown if you don't at least seem to stay calm, but fuck. You're close to not being able to do that. 

He drags you into the bedroom, letting you go as he steps over to the bed. You have to take a minute to check the state of the grubs you can see—Novvem's by the sopor tank nuzzling a towel-wrapped Rahnza, Enigma and Grafii and Lutien are curled up on the floor by the dresser, Gaudiu is already gently butting their head against your leg to be picked up. "Wait," you tell them, quietly, and step over to Dave, putting a hand on his shoulder and wincing at his flinch. "What's going on, babe? What's wrong?" 

"Raccon, they're—fuck, I—" He doesn't even look at you, leaning over the bed and reaching down with one shaky hand to touch the only grub there that's not squirming. "Won't wake up, Kat, they—" 

_Shit_. All of a sudden you can't breathe. 

You gently pull Dave's hands out of the way to get a look. The dark red grub's curled in tightly on themself; if they're breathing it's too slow for you to see. But when you touch them you find that they're covered in a familiar, smoothly tacky substance that's already starting to harden, and even though Dave's still standing there panicking, you sigh in relief. "Dave, stop. It's okay." 

"How the f-fuck—" 

"They just started pupation, that's all." Raccon can do without your attention; Dave, on the other hand, definitely needs it. You turn to him, putting both hands on his shoulders and waiting for him to stop looking over at the grub and focus on you. "Calm down. It's okay."

He takes the first deep breath since he came in to get you, lets it out in an uneven sigh, and nods, leaning against you. "You sure they're gonna be all right?" 

"Mhm. This is the easy part." He's still trembling a bit, not calmed down yet; when Dave gets upset it almost always takes him a long time—anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours—to get himself back to normal. You let go of him, locate Lielin, who's whimpering softly and probably not helping Dave's mental state at all, and get him to take them. "We wait for the cocoon to harden, then we put them in the sopor. In a couple days a..." Fuck, what's the word. "A toddler comes out. It's okay." 

Dave nods slowly, cradling Lielin as you pull him down to sit on the bed next to you. "I think I just had a heart attack, Kat." He says it like it's an attempt at a joke, but even with Lielin safe and projecting the feeling of safety at him, you can tell he's still upset. 

"You didn't give yourself a nosebleed again, did you?" you ask him, turning a bit so you can reach up to hold his face. He's done that before during a panic attack, but you already know he didn't this time. This is more of an excuse to touch him like this, see if you can't calm him down through contact.

It seems to work, too. Dave rolls his eyes at you, leaning into your hands. "Trust me, I'd be fucking crying like an asshole if I had. I'm okay, you can—" 

"Shush." You know him well enough to anticipate the end of that sentence, which is almost certainly going to be him telling you to go back to working on dinner and let him finish getting the grubs up. "Nobody's going to die if food's ten fucking minutes late. Come here." 

"I might. You don't know how hungry I am." But he slides into your lap despite his own protest, scooping up the two grubs there to curl up with Lielin. His smile at them is a lot more calm than you really expected. "You can go, shit doesn't have to go on hold 'cause of me..." 

"I said shoosh. Shh. Shut the ever-loving fuck up." He groans, because he's a contrary asshole who's never going to do exactly what's asked of him, but it breaks up into a laugh as you dip your head to kiss the side of his neck where you know he's ticklish. 

"Kar _kaaat_..." His halfhearted effort to shove you away is completely ineffective, due to the fact that he's not willing to let go of the grubs he's holding and use his hands. You keep kissing until he's laughing hard enough that he can't get words through. By that time most of the grubs are giggling too, and it's actually difficult to disentangle yourself from them so you can go back to making the food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why is this so short wtf


	9. Pyrotechnics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Your name is Bowie Strider-Vantas, and you're really not supposed to be outside at night. Neither are Fletch, Jazehn, or Zandyr, but when one of your siblings has an idea there's almost always a few others that'll pick it up and run with it. (Porrim says that that's flock mentality and that trolls aren't supposed to be subject to it. You don't really get what she means. You're a troll, everyone in your family is a troll except Dave and he's like a troll by adoption anyway, so that counts, and if someone has a good idea of course there'll be other someones who want to participate.) 

Um. Where were you?

Ah. Outside. In the backyard, actually, making up one-quarter of a circle around the grass-free spot where Raccon and Lielin accidentally made a small toxic waste spill last week. Zandyr and Fletch are crouched a little closer to the center, arguing quietly over the package Cronus traded you for fixing his cassette player, taking turns trying to read the instructions in the dark. 

(You already read the instructions. They're basically "light this end and back up.") 

Jazehn is sitting and watching quietly, with a huge grin on their face. You nudge their arm with your elbow. " Jaz." 

"Mhm." They don't take their eyes off the package, so you nudge again. 

" _Jaz._ Just the fuses, okay? You know that, right?" You're not sure what'd happen if they set off the entire bundle at once, but you feel like it'd be loud enough to bring your dads outside. "Jazehn, you better be listening." 

"Of course I am, Bowie, fucking chill." They look over at you and grin, showing a brief flash of sharp, crooked teeth. "I'm good at this, you know that." 

"I know Dave's gonna yell at you if he catches you swearing..." 

"If he catches us out here we're all gonna get yelled at anyway," Jazehn points out, reaching over to mess up your hair playfully and giggling when you hiss and bat their hand away. "I wanna make the most of it." 

"Tha's gonna ge' ya yel' at more," Zandyr points out, looking up from the package. Fletch absently reaches up to tug Zandyr's chewy pendant out of their mouth so they're actually understandable. "Anyway, there's two kinds here, ones you can hold and ones you can't—" 

"I can hold them," Jazehn interjects, looking inordinately pleased with themself. 

"—well, it _says_ you can't. Bowie, they're your thingies, which ones are we gonna do first?" 

"Uh..." Nice. Decisions. You're not all that into decisions. 

Fletch saves you from actually having to make any right now by looking up and pointing out, "Don't you think the holding ones might be quieter?"

"Probably." You, Jazehn, and Zandyr all say it in unison, then look at each other and giggle nervously. Fletch joins in on the laugh even as they rip the clear plastic off the package and separate the contents into two piles, setting one in the center of the bare patch and handing out the other ones. There's two left over, and you end up with them somehow. You shove them into your pocket, lighty-ends down so they don't get set off accidentally, and get to your feet, looking over at Jazehn. 

They're smiling again, too big for you to be totally comfortable with. 

"Ready?" you ask, and when Jaz nods you look at everyone else. Fletch is nodding, holding out their stick as far as they can get it from their body and eyeing it suspiciously, and Zandyr is nodding enthusiastically, their chewy necklace clenched between their teeth again. "Okay...three, two, one, do it—" 

You say "do it," Jazehn makes a clicking sound in the back of their throat, and all four sparklers catch at once, each spraying a different color of bright sparks. Fletch squawks in surprise, jumping back. This accomplishes nothing, since they're holding the source of turquoise sparks. 

" _Don't_ drop it," you and Jazehn warn at the same time. Jazehn seems more mesmerized than worried, the yellow light from their sparkler throwing shadows that make their horns and hair seem to dance like real flames. You're not quite so calm, but you can't feel any heat off your own white one, so you're not panicking. 

"Look a' thi'!" Zandyr squeals, waving their red sparkler fast enough to make lingering light-trails. They make a circle, a triangle, than a wobbly Z, and almost drop their pendant out of their mouth. 

After a second you and all four of your siblings are trying to make patterns or write things with your sparklers. Other than Jazehn, nobody really has much luck. Jaz is cheating, too, using their pyro abilities to keep the sparks that fly off burning just a little longer, gathering them together to make an uneven heart-shape. 

"Jaz—" Fletch gingerly holds out their sparkler towards Jazehn, until it's almost touching the yellow one. It takes Jaz a minute, but they group the yellow sparks and the blue into a greenish bird-shape, answering Fletch's happy smile with one of their own. 

You exchange a quick look with Zandyr, and both of you hold your sparklers in to meet Fletch's and Jazehn's, making one big pool of sparks. Jaz is clicking so fast they almost sound like they're purring as the sparks move together, swirling into an almost-rainbow that morphs into a snake, a more coherent bird, a miniature model of the hoofbeast plushie that Dirk gave to you all when you were still wrigglers. You can't help but trill at the sight of that last one, and Fletch and Zandyr answer you. 

Jazehn doesn't make a sound other than their clicking until the sparklers burn out and the hoofbeast dissolves into nothing and leaves all four of you blinking at afterimages. Then they shake their head, dropping the burnt-out stick in the bare dirt and grinning. "Told you I was good." 

"That was _amazing_!" Zandyr's voice is completely clear for once; they dropped their necklace so they could trill when Jazehn made the hoofbeast. 

"Amazing," Fletch echoes. They look both awed and slightly afraid. "I'm not holding one if you do it again, though, that was...bright. Like, wow." 

"Very much wow," you agree. "Jaz, are you still okay for the other ones, or...?" If they hesitate at all, you're putting it off for another night. You don't know if Jazehn listened to Sollux talk about burning out psionics and other mental powers, but you did even if you don't have any of your own, and you don't want your sibling to hurt themself. 

Their answer is immediate and certain, though. "I'm good, I promise—maybe you should go back over by the house a little, though..." 

Zandyr pouts at that, but when you and Fletch each get ahold of one of their horns they go along without having to be pulled. The three of you huddle maybe fifteen feet away as Jazehn crouches, examines the three long stick-things left in the package, and carefully pokes them into the dirt. They spend a minute prodding at them to make sure they're firmly set, then take a step back, click to set a flame at the fuses on each one, and hurry to join the three of you. 

After a second of nothing happening, Zandyr whispers, "Are they supposed to—" 

_Then_ the rockets go off. All three of them. All at once. Fletch cries out and grabs at you at the trebled high-pitched whistle, and Zandyr and Jazehn revert to grub-talk, noises of pure excitement and interest, as they explode into three bright starbursts in the sky. 

Okay, so that was a lot cooler than you expected. 

Two problems, though. Fletch is crying a little bit, and that was loud enough that your dads might've heard, so you might be about to get busted. This obviously hasn't occurred to Zandyr, who's still bouncing up and down in excitement, but Jazehn is already looking a bit concerned. 

"Bowie—" 

"You go in, take Zan with you, I'll take care of Fletch," you tell them before they can finish. "My fireworks, if I get in trouble that's okay." 

"But—" 

"Jaz! Move!" And they do, dragging Zan back towards the window you all climbed out of as you start shooshing Fletch. They're not as upset as they could be, just startled and a little bit scared, and after a minute they do calm down and let you pull them over to the window. 

Dave and Karkat don't come to see what the noise was. After some shoving and chittering, you manage to get your good spot in the blanket pile back, pulling Fletch over to snuggle with you and Novvem as an apology for letting them get scared. 

The next morning Dave hands you a photo along with your cereal bowl and grins at you. "Congrats on not setting anything on fire this time. No more pyrotechnics without asking first," is all he says. 

You check out the pic—an amazingly clear depiction of Jazehn's hoofbeast—grin up at Dave, a little guiltily, and nod. At least you're not in trouble. And Jaz is going to love the picture.


	10. Heat Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's more about Dave just so you're aware...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

It's fucking _hot._

Like, pretty damn close to summer-in-Texas-with-broken-AC hot. Like, worse than you've had to handle since you were twelve years old. Like, maybe worse than it was on LOHAC—there, at least it was dry, there was a fucking reason for it, you hated it but you could deal. 

You're not doing that great of a job of dealing with this. 

Karkat's in the bedroom with the grubs, all of them passed out on the bed with five or six fans blowing on them. He tried to get you to strip and lie down with them, but you fucking can't do it. Most of the time you don't even think about your scars anymore, don't worry about Karkat seeing them since he's seen them so many times before anyway, but right now? Right now you can barely handle being alone in the living room with your shirt off and another fan blowing full-power on you as you lie on the couch and very carefully don't look at anything but the ceiling. 

The front door's locked, all the doors to outside are locked, every fucking door that isn't the one into the bedroom is locked, but you still can't shake the goddamn feeling that somebody's going to walk in. 

And probably beat the shit out of you. 

You feel really fucking stupid for feeling like this, but going over the logic of nothing being here to hurt you, the fact that you don't have an actual reason to be terrified? That's doing absolutely nothing. A fucking goose egg. You're hot, you're scared for no reason, and you feel like shit. 

And somehow you still fall asleep. 

Thankfully, you don't go deep enough to really start dreaming, because you'd rather not think about the caliber of nightmares your stupid brain might come up with right now. Mostly it's just blank for some length of time that you don't track as it passes, until something warm and heavy climbs up onto you, sharp little feet pricking into your skin just enough to jolt you back awake. 

"Fuck—" The grub on your chest looks up and coos apologetically at you, crawling up to nuzzle anxiously at your face, and you realize that you're breathing way too fast and shallow, enough that you're already feeling lightheaded. It's just Nonomi, just one of your kids, and you need to get a fucking grip on yourself. "Hey...it's okay. Dave-dad's just an idiot." 

They chirr and scoot back again, nosing at the tracery of whiter lines on your pale skin. Now that you think about it...none of the grubs have gotten to see your scars close up. You take off your shirt to bathe them and whatever but you sleep with a shirt on, maybe a light one if it's hot but still a shirt, so if they've noticed the marks they haven't got a chance to examine them more closely. And the grubs know what scars mean. Some of them have scars of their own, and even those that don't understand that it's a mark of being hurt. 

Nonomi chirrs again, following it up with a questioning, worried whine. You don't understand all the noises grubs make, but they're making it pretty clear that they're worried about you. 

"I'm okay." You sigh, reaching up to fold one arm over their body and trying to brush your fingers through their long, tangled hair. They squeak, rubbing against your hand, but don't lose that worried expression. "I'm _okay._ They're old, they're..." 

Another chirr, and Nonomi taps the two matched scars centered on your chest and on your stomach, looking between your face and the marks. 

"Those...weren't even really—" Something, somewhere in the house, makes a soft noise, maybe a grub shifting to knock a pillow off the bed, maybe a bird landing on the roof. You don't know what it is, and it doesn't matter, because it's quiet enough to be just barely audible, and you know what that means, you _know,_ you know who it is, you can't fucking _breathe_ — 

Nonomi makes a growling yip, a sound that you haven't heard any grub make before, and digs the claws on their good legs into your skin. It's not enough to make you bleed, but it still manages to snap you back to here and now. 

"Oh, fuck." If you can hear the tremor in your voice, so can Nonomi. You shake your head and pull them up a little bit, hugging them to your chest and burying your nose in their hair. "Sorry. I'm sorry. Fuck, I'm sorry." 

They're chirping, still with that questioning inquisitive note, but they don't try to squirm free. If anything, they shove their head further under your chin, blunt horns scraping gently at your face. 

You. 

You want to talk. 

Maybe you shouldn't. 

You do it anyway. 

"Those big ones're from something that didn't happen." You keep your eyes fixed on the ceiling and your nose buried in Nonomi's hair as you start speaking, breathing in soft spicy grub-scent. There's nothing like that, not on any of the worlds you've taken a trip to. (Definitely not back on Earth, back in Texas, back in Houston, back in the apartment. You can smell your kid, feel the weight of them on your chest, you're not there, you're here.) "They go all the way through, there's matching ones on my back, but the shit that should've put them there? Didn't happen. Not in this timeline. So I didn't get hurt from those, I promise." 

Nonomi chirrs softly and moves one stunted leg to trace one of the older cuts along your collarbone, careful not to press down too hard. You still shiver. 

"...yeah. That one happened." That's as far as you can go. You don't talk about the oldest scars, not even to Karkat, not even on good days. Except. "My...lusus. Guardian. Bro. He used to—used to train me, right?" Stopping doesn't seem to really be an option right this second. You're not done. "Kind of train me...I mean, yeah, I fucking _needed_ to learn to fight, he taught me how to stay alive when shit started going down—" 

_Stop apologizing for him,_ a voice whispers in the back of your mind. It sounds kind of like John. Usually you'd just push it away. 

This time, though? "...he. Fuck." Nonomi wriggles closer when you stall, starting to make the purring coo that the grubs use to placate each other. You guess it works on humans too. "It wasn't fucking about teaching me, most of the time. Or maybe it was, but only—only because he could tell himself taking everything out on me _was_ teaching me...like, yeah, he didn't totally want me to get fucking obliterated when shit hit the fan, but the fact that he got to beat the shit outta me was a fucking _bonus._ " 

You have to stop for a second, because even if you haven't hit the can't-breathe panic state yet, you're still not breathing steady. 

In the relative silence there's another quiet sound, and you can't bite back your own terrified whimper. Which makes it worse—he's going to fucking _hear_ you—and you almost immediately tip over into pure fucking fear and panic, the tiny reasoning part of your brain trying to talk the much larger animal portion that it's okay, there's not anything here, you need to breathe and think and not fucking scare Nonomi. 

It takes a good two and a half minutes to come down from that, even with Nonomi nuzzling your neck and cooing at you. When you've got yourself more or less under control, you sigh and go back to running your fingers through their hair, trying not to wince at how sore your palms are from digging your nails into them. 

"Sorry." They just chirp, once, and go back to the soothing coos. "It was—a long time ago, okay? I'm not hurt now, I promise." 

Well, not anywhere you can fix with bandages and stitches (or superglue, you guess; Bro didn't care for sewing you up and he _never_ took you to a doctor unless broken bones he couldn't set or head injuries were involved, so you have some experience with using superglue for its original purpose.) Whether you're fucked up in your head is still up for debate. 

Not really, though. When you're reacting like this to every little sound, it's not really a question of whether you're fucked up. More like how and to what extent—

_God fucking dammit—_

This time Nonomi squeaks in alarm as your hands tighten a little on them, but you can't stop yourself from cradling them tighter—was that a shadow? That was a fucking shadow, fuck, you don't know how or why but he's here, he's here and he's going to take your kid away, drag you off the couch and out of the room and up—

"Dave? Dave!" It's not Bro. You still try to curl around Nonomi, keep them safe at least. "Fucking hell, Dave...come here. You're okay. You're safe, Dave, it's okay...come here."  


You're barely managing the simple task of breathing and not passing out; participating in the process of Karkat sitting down on the couch and rearranging things so he's holding you is pretty much out of the question. He manages it anyway, though, cradling you to his bare chest almost like you're holding Nonomi. 

"Let me see your hand," he says after a minute, and when your force yourself to let go of Nonomi with one hand Karkat takes your wrist, bringing your hand up and pressing it against the side of his neck. "It's just me. You feel that? It's me. I'm right here."

You can feel his pulse against your palm. It's slower than a human's, or at least slower than yours, not quite in beat with the ever-present ticking of the clock in your head. It's him, it's Karkat, you can feel it, and after a few seconds of lying still against him and letting your breathing slow down you think you can start to hear it too. 

"I'm okay," you tell him, eventually, not moving yet. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit." Karkat huffs, reaching around with the hand that's not covering yours to stroke Nonomi's head. "You're not fucking fine if you're having flashbacks and panic attacks." 

"I'm not—"

"I've been watching you for ten minutes, Dave." He moves from Nonomi's hair to yours. He's gentle. Not all that quiet, but gentle, and even though you still don't feel right you find yourself relaxing. "I'm calling in some favors, get somebody to grubsit...we're going to go somewhere cool for a couple days, okay?" 

"You don't gotta do that..." It's a instinctive reaction, and when he growls at you and tells you you're a fucking idiot, it's a relief. 

Getting away from this godawful weather might not totally fix you, but it's going to help get you back to normal.


	11. Sollux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Karkat gives you exactly thirty seconds warning. That's literally not enough, especially since you don't notice the pop-up because it's too fucking small and you're distracted by trying to kick Dirk's ass in the multiplayer team death match Hal set up. You've got Dirk pinned down, Hal's just about to snipe Eridan—

And then you actually see the pesterchum notif just as Karkat, Dave, and three of their troll kids abruptly materialize about six feet away from you. That might have been enough for you to tip your goddamn chair over in surprise, but added to the sudden intrusion is the fact that all three kids are crying, and that as soon as they appear your psionics surge up without your permission. 

"Holy _fuck—_ " The keyboard crackles and sparks, the screen of your computer goes dark, and you just barely manage to rip your headset off before it starts smoking. "KK, what the—" 

You have to stop talking for a moment, pressing both hands against your head. You don't even know when the last time you lost control so badly was, but it's pretty fucking terrifying this time around—you're a lot stronger than you used to be, and every ounce of that power is trying to get out right now. When you force your eyes open again, everything is too fucking bright and colored with sparks. 

Some of those sparks are white rather than red or blue, though: Myrmyr's standing in between Dave and Karkat, not touching anyone, their face screwed up in fear and confusion. They're throwing almost as much lightning as you must be. It's a little bit difficult to think at this point, but you still force yourself to check out the other two. Karkat's trying to soothe Lielin, and not doing too well by the sound of their piercing shrieks. Dave's got—

The second you focus on the ram-horned kid clinging to the human's legs, you lose your tenuous hold on your psionics, and bicolored lightning jumps from you to your computer setup, more-or-less gutting it before you have enough sense to look somewhere else and get yourself under control. 

"Out, get them the fuck out—" Name, what's the name, it's one that's got a weird not-quite-sibilant at the beginning— "Xiophi needth to go thomewhere elthe _right the fuck now—_ " 

Dave scoops the kid up into his arms and they're both gone. Sure enough, the frantic pressure in your skull evaporates even if the leftover adrenaline in your system keeps lightning sparking around your horns. That itches. 

Myrmyr and Lielin are still sobbing, and Karkat gives you a slightly-desperate look as he sits down on the floor to try to quiet the latter. "We're having some issues today," he says. 

"Oh my fucking gog, you think?" Myrmyr flinches back when you kneel down next to them, spelling something out with their hands that you're too distracted to follow. "Tranthlate for me." 

He looks over, freeing up his hands to sign something back at Myrmyr. "Uh...'I don't want to hurt you, I already stung Ferrus, I'm sorry—'" 

"Yeah, that happenth. Tell them it'th okay, I'm immune." You're not, but you're used to it at least. Myrmyr watches Karkat's hands, nodding slowly as you reach up to try to touch their horns. 

They start crying again when their psionics knock your hands back. 

"Fuck." Ow. Your fingertips are actually numb. Your own fault for leading with skin when you didn't have to. It's still a little bit hard to shape your own powers to do exactly what you want them to, but after a second of calming yourself you reach out, crafting a tiny cloud of red and blue lightning around the kid's head and applying _very gentle_ pressure on their horns. 

Myrmyr stops mid-wail as the contact short-circuits the visible evidence of their psionics, their mouth staying open in a (really fucking funny) expression of surprise. After another second, you release the pressure, sit back on your heels, and hold out your arms. 

"'Does that mean it's okay for me—" Karkat translates as Myrmyr's hands move, and you cut him off.

"You're okay. C'mere." You don't know if their one-way telepathy is functioning well enough for them to hear you, but the nod and the emphatic gesture you make as you say that gets the point across even if it's not. Myrmyr makes a soft sound, and that's all the warning you get before they slam into your chest, one horn managing to scrape gently across your cheek and knock your glasses sideways. Eh, you can fix that later. Right now you just wrap your arms around the kid, humming at them until they go boneless and limp against you from the soothing vibration. 

Karkat's grinning when you look over at him. "Shut the fuck up, KK." 

"Didn't say anything." He shrugs, adjusting Lielin's weight in his arms. They look like they're asleep already, and you can understand that; empathy must be exhausting when they're exposed to that much at once. "Thanks." 

"Hey, you weren't gonna be able to calm them down yourthelf." Myrmyr whines, rubbing their face against your shoulder until you adjust your grip to totally support their weight and hum at them for another second. "Better be more careful with Xiophi, though. I dunno who you can get to teach them to keep that weird amplifying thtuff under wrapth, but it'th either that or keep them away from the thionics." 

He shakes his head, stifling a laugh. "I'm pretty sure it only happened this time because they drank one of Dave's spiked apple juices." 

"You idiotth leave alcohol where the kidth can—" 

" _Caffeine,_ Sollux. Jesus fuck, calm down." Karkat gets one hand free, gesturing vaguely at his horns. "Really. Calm down." 

Now that he mentions it, you can feel the familiar warm tickle around your own horns. You guess you're still a little worked up, but it lets you will it away easily enough. "Yeah. Thorry...you want me to keep Myrmyr overnight? Jutht in cathe?" 

"You okay with that?" 

"Yeah, totally. We can hang out. And thee what'th thalvagable off my gaming thetup." You nod at your wrecked computer, and Karkat has the grace to look guilty. 

"Fuck, Sol, I'm—" 

"Eh, don't worry about it. Giveth me a project to work on with thith one." Although it'll have to wait until Myrmyr wakes up, because they're out cold at this point. Actually, you could do with a nap too. Xiophi's amplifying talent is a little bit deadly. "Want me to take LL too?" 

" _Lielin._ " 

"Fuck you, they know I mean them." 

"Yeah, yeah." He snorts, gets to his feet, and sets Lielin down on the couch. They immediately get ahold of one of the pillows Aradia keeps leaving here, curling around it. "You sure you're okay with both of them?" 

The look you give Karkat is, apparently, more eloquent than anything you might've said, because he laughs, steps over to pat Myrmyr's head, and heads out of the room. 

You're left with the not-quite-wrigglers and the choice of taking them into the other room and napping on the bed, or just passing out with Lielin on the couch. 

Hmm. Couch. 

Lielin starts purring when you pull them to lay on your chest, which starts Myrmyr off, and now you're lying here with _two_ happy, sleeping grubs on top of you, and wow. Just wow. This makes it really easy and pleasant to fall asleep. 

You really need to volunteer for babysitting more often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sollux has the most awkward speech impediment to write I swear to god
> 
> also Dave puts caffeine shots in his apple juice sometimes. He just does. He's an idiot.


	12. In Which Several Children Adopt A Cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Your name is Ferrus, and while it's not entirely unusual for somebody to be yelling it when you're just innocently going about your own business (in this case, using some of the scraps of fabric Kanaya gave you to wrap around small rocks so you can stage a furry-rock-animal battle), it's usually not a good thing when they do. But then again, it's Gaudiu shouting this time, and they sound kind of excited, and Fenrir's over by them, and both of your siblings are crouched down trying to get at something under one of the bushes that separate Rose-and-Kanaya's-yard from everywhere else, and some of those bushes have thorns which is one of the reasons why you're all supposed to stay inside the yard when you're over here, and if anybody's going to get scratched on a bush it should be you. 

Anyway, you shove the last few scraps of fake fur down into your pocket for safekeeping and get up to see what they're worked up over. Gaudiu's lying flat on the ground, feeling around carefully under the bush, and Fenrir's crouched a little bit away, making a set of sounds that seem, to you, to be nonsense. 

"C'mere, mrrr, waow, here kitty, kitty kitty kitty, maow, meow? Mrow? Here ki—" Fenrir stops, scooting an inch away when you kneel down next to them and try to get a look under the bush. "There's a cat," they say, a little unnecessarily even though you can't see the supposed cat at the moment. 

"Uh, so?" Rose and Kanaya have five cats—two calicos, a white, a black, and one that's pleasingly mottled black and brown. None of them particularly like you, although Azathoth will submit to being stroked, and even use your lap as a throne once you start purring from the sheer joy of getting to touch his fur. "It's not gonna come out for you unless it's Azathoth or Ginsberg, the others don't like us enough. And none of them are gonna come near you anyway, Gaudiu, they know you wanna lick them." 

Gaudiu rolls over onto their back to glare up at you. "I'm not gonna lick them." 

"You did it before. They don't know you won't again." 

Fenrir clicks loudly, focusing your attention on them again. Gaudiu sits up to look at them too—when Fenrir makes that sound, it means they really think what they're going to say is important. "It's not Azathoth or Ginsberg, but it's not Harbinger or Schrödinger or Ebie either. It's Another Cat." They say it with the authority that means capital letters. It just does. "A little cat. A teeny cat. A grub cat." 

" _Kitten,_ " Gaudiu supplies. 

"Okay, kitten." 

"Rose and 'naya's cats can't have kittens," you feel the need to point out. "Lutien asked, remember?" 

"It's still a kitten." Gaudiu pouts, lying back down to keep trying to reach under the bush, but keeps talking. "Not any of Rose's cats' kittens, maybe not _anybody's_ kitten, but it's little and it sounds sad and it doesn't belong under here—ow!" They yelp, scrambling back and putting their hand to their mouth, but you still see a little splash of lavender against light grey skin. 

"It bit you?" You lean over to take their wrist, pulling their hand away from their mouth and struggling to push down your immediate urge to try and rip apart anything that dares hurt your nestmates. It's just a scared little kitty, you don't need to snap into lusus-mom mode, calm _down._

It's just a set of tiny shallow cuts, anyway, just enough to break the skin, and Gaudiu looks more surprised than hurt. "Scratched me," they correct, looking at the scratches curiously before pulling their hand back and running their tongue across them. 

"Don't do that," Fenrir almost whines, shaking their head and closing their eyes for a second. "Dave said not to do that, you get spit in your cuts and it's Bad, I don't like it—"

Gaudiu raises both hands, palms out. "Okay, okay, I stopped. See? I stopped." 

"Don't do it." 

You understand that this is something Fenrir feels very strongly about, but you still have to steer the conversation back to the actual issue at hand. "Kitty's still under there." 

Fenrir and Gaudiu both frown, and Gaudiu backs up from their spot next to the bush. "You wanna try? Fenrir won't—" 

" _Can't._ Sorry," Fenrir interjects. 

"—and I can't get it to come out, so..." 

"Mhm, okay." You have no confidence in your ability to coax this cat out, but you still stretch out in the grass, peering into the shady spot. Hm. There actually is a kitten under there, a white-and-orange striped one, and Fenrir wasn't kidding about it being tiny; you bet if you cupped your hands it could curl up comfortably in your palms. It'd probably like that, too—you can see it shivering from here, and as you watch and consider it, it opens its mouth in a very small _mew._

Oh, wow. 

You're getting this kitty out if you have to crawl all the way up under the thorny bush to do it. That's your cat now. You think you're in love. Or something. 

But how to get a cat to come out? 

Well, the ones in the house are attracted to your purring, so you guess it's time to try that. You hold out one hand and start thinking of all the best, safest, most comforting things you know of: curling up at night with Dave and Karkat, speaking in grub-talk with your siblings, cuddling Nonomi when they're upset until they stop shaking and nuzzle against your shoulder instead—

That memory did it. You can feel the vibration in your chest, and you've got the kitty's attention. It takes a step toward you, then hesitates, mewing again. 

On impulse, you meow back. You don't sound exactly like a cat, your voice is too flat and rough around the edges right now with your purring, but it's close enough that the kitten mews in response and slowly makes its way out from under the bush to rub up against your hand. You wait for a second before you pick it up, sit up, and cradle it to your chest, but it doesn't even try to bite or scratch. 

Gaudiu squeaks in excitement, leaning over to look down and stroke along the darker orange stripe on the kitten's forehead. "It's so _little._ Do you think it's really a cat?" 

"What else would it be?" Fenrir asks, reasonably enough, gingerly reaching over and just barely touching the kitty's fur with one forefinger. "It's a baby, like a grub but not a grub, they're gonna be little." 

"I wanna keep it," you state, meowing at the cat again and feeling a grin spread across your face as it mews back, licks your palm, and starts up a very small purr. "Do you think Dave and Karkat will let us all be lusii for a kitten?" 

"Kittens don't need lusii," Fenrir points out. "They have parents. Only trolls have lusii, and most trolls here and now don't even have them, they have parents like we do." 

"This kitten doesn't have parents, though." Or if it does, they're not very good ones, to leave it cold and scared under a bush. You think about what might've happened to the kitten's parents without meaning to think about it, and can't help but shiver. You don't like thinking about things hurting or dying when you can't help them. 

Gaudiu frowns when you shudder, reaching up to tap one of your horns just in case you need to be pulled back from one of the bad places in your head. "They'll let us keep the kitty, don't worry. It'll be fine." 

Fenrir cocks their head, then holds out their hands. "Let me see?" 

You're a little surprised by that request—usually Fenrir doesn't want to touch—but you willingly unhook the tiny claws from your shirt and pass the kitty across. Fenrir's a bit awkward holding it, but they figure out how to support its slight weight after a second, cuddling it up to their shirt before they carefully work a fingertip into its mouth. 

(You tense up as they do that. _They're gonna get bit,_ your mind keeps whispering, and even though you know that the kitten's teeth are tiny enough not to really hurt, you still don't like the idea of that.) 

After a second, though, Fenrir nods and holds the kitty out for you to take it again. "She has teeth," they say, like that statement is important. 

You don't know why it would be. "We do too?" 

"Teeth means she can eat food, not just milk." They shrug. "Makes her easier to take care of, right? Dirk had one of those armor ball thingies—" 

"Dillo?" Gaudiu suggests, petting the cat again. "Armor dillo."

You actually know this one. " _Armadillo._ "

"Armadillo, a little teeny one that needed milk still, and he had to keep feeding it all night and in the daytime." Fenrir blinks. "Babies are easier when they don't need milk." 

You'd want to keep the kitten even if it still needed milk, but that's reassuring. "Let's ask Rose for food for it?" 

Fenrir nods, and you pull Gaudiu to their feet with the hand that isn't holding the kitten, since they look distracted enough not to realize you're getting up. 

"Did _we_ used to need just milk?" they ask as the three of you—well, four, with the cat—head back inside the house. 

You shrug, and so does Fenrir. You make a mental note to find out the answer from Kanaya later, just so Fenrir can have it. 

Gaudiu finds a can of cat food before you find either Kanaya or Rose, though, and since it's one of the ones that you can open with the tab on the top instead of the can opener, you just take the lid off and set it and the kitten on the counter. The little orange girl starts meowing (loudly, for her, even if it's still a ridiculously small sound) the second she smells the food, and tries to keep the noises up as she starts to eat. This has you and Gaudiu giggling within ten seconds. Fenrir's actually quiet for once, but they keep reaching out to skim their fingertips across the kitten's spine. 

"She needs a name," you point out, after a minute or two and about a quarter of the can of cat food. 

"Rusty," Gaudiu offers, at the same moment that Fenrir says, "Stripes?" 

"She's not even rusty," you tell Gaudiu, who just shrugs and scoops up the kitten as it wanders away from the food and towards the edge of the counter. "Rust is red." 

They roll their eyes at you. "Come up with a better name then." 

Hm. 

She's mostly orange. Some flowers are orange, the sunsets are orange sometimes, and... "Satsuma." 

"Satsuma?" Fenrir smiles, saying it more slowly. "Satsuma. Fruit kitty—I like it." 

You didn't expect Gaudiu to be pleased with that pick, but they're grinning too, chirping at the kitten before nodding. "I like that one. Satsuma." 

The three of you are still cooing Satsuma's name at her when Kanaya comes in and starts asking questions about Where On Earth You Acquired That Child. Once you explain, she calls Dave and asks him how he feels about having a pet, and the end result is that she gives you a basket and you use the fabric scraps from earlier to make Satsuma a nice nest. 

Karkat literally cries when you bring basket and kitten home and present your new hivemate to him and Dave. Thankfully, both of them and all your siblings immediately adopt Satsuma as one more member of the household. 

She seems very happy about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Kanaya's cats' names are Azathoth (black and male, likes cantaloupe and tolerates small grabby troll kids), Ginsberg (tortoishell I think and female, will be nice for treats), Harbinger (white and female, hides in the cabinets and doesn't just play with Rose's yarn but makes intricate webs with it), Ebie (pronounced EB, short for "Eldritch Being," huge fluffy female calico who may or may not be capable of walking through doors and other solid objects although no one's seen her do it), and Schrödinger (Ebie's brother, the other calico. He's half her size; he gets locked in empty rooms and cries about it.)


	13. D and Seadwellers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alpha Dave finally gets to meet some of the kids! And, as requested: the sea trolls!
> 
> [ list of grubs](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/168233688121/i-have-21-grubs-and-i-made-a-list-of-all-of-them)

Your desire to meet your alternate-universe self's kids is probably stronger than your desire to do just about anything else on this world that you find yourself on. (Meeting your bro, Dirk, might have taken first place. But it'd be a close thing, if you'd had to choose.) You're not about to ask Dave to bring them around or invite you over, though—you have the inherent ability to be a tactless ass, but you can usually sublimate that urge. 

Thankfully, he was the one who messaged you yesterday asking if you were cool with meeting a couple of the kids. He was very specific about "just a couple," actually—you're not sure which ones he'll be bringing, or any specifics about when they'll show up, but you know that he's definitely going to bring between two and five kids with him. And god fucking damn but you are excited here. _Kids._ Have you ever been around actual kids, let alone some who count as more-or-less related to you even if they are lil' aliens? You're fairly confident that you have, in fact, never had the opportunity to interact with offspring of either your species or basically any other, in your old life or in this weird new one. This is going to be a completely new experience. Probably an unmitigatedly good one—

Literally the only reason your excitement-and-anxiety-fueled internal monologue stops at all is because someone—Dave, obviously—knocks at the door. You give the apartment one last glance—yes, everything dangerous or more than mildly questionable is out of sight and reach—and flash-step to the door. 

_Okay, don't do that again as long as he's here,_ you think as you grin and open the door. "Yo, Dave, you bring me some niblings to meet?" 

He snorts at the (completely accurate) term before nodding and gently pushing the two troll kids inside, adjusting his grip on the one he's holding. "Hell yeah I did. Rahnza." Mismatched horns and a quizzical tilt to their mouth, with tiny teal studs in their finned ears. "Gaudiu." Bright eyes and wavy horns that rise above hair that's about as straight as yours and Dave's is, which is pretty damn unique for trolls so far as you know; they look up at you and grin, pale purple tongue poking out of the corner of their mouth. "Zandyr. Kids, meet your uncle D." 

There's a chorus of greeting from the two standing up, and a muffled sound from Zandyr, who has some kind of bright pink toy clenched between their sharp teeth. They don't even hesitate before they let go of Dave's neck and lean over to reach for you. 

"Holy fuck." You weren't expecting that kind of immediate and unquestioning acceptance, damn. You aren't sure you know how to hold a kid, either, but Dave steps closer and you don't have a choice here, other than taking the kid and settling them on your hip. This close, you can see that they have freckles scattered across smooth babyskin like a galaxy made of tiny pink stars. The last time you were around a troll with blood this color, they were significantly larger and trying to murder you. "Hey, Zan. What's up?" 

They giggle and let the toy drop out of their mouth; you almost try to catch it before you realize it's on a cord around their neck. "Me?" 

"You are up, definitely, excellent reasoning skills." That earns you another giggle and a nod that has you wanting to hold them just a _little_ further away for fear of getting your face ripped open with those spreading zigzag horns. But hey, that would probably be one of the better ways to die, bleeding to death from a really fucking cute kid liking you. "How do y'all feel about helping your uncle D paint some backgrounds?" You look over at Dave and add, "With washable paint, I swear." 

"Trust me, we go through enough clothes that I literally don't care at all anymore." He shrugs, nudging a slightly-more-reluctant Rahnza to follow you into your art room. Gaudiu needs absolutely no prompting; they're trailing along beside you, one hand clutching at the hem of your shirt. 

You had the foresight to set everything up beforehand, paint mixed and set out in containers on the floor around the huge sheet of light cardboard you bribed Dirk into acquiring for you. Dave snags the container of brushes off the table and sits down on one end of the setup as you set Zandyr on the floor, patting the carpet next to himself until Rahnza joins him. 

Again, Gaudiu doesn't need coaxing. Gaudiu is already dipping their fingers into the blue paint, examining the color for a second before plopping down close to where you're making yourself comfortable and planting their palm flat against the paper to leave a tiny handprint. 

Which is so fucking cute you want to _melt._ Instead, you ask them, "You want a paintbrush?" 

"Nuh-uh. Slimy." They shake their head, and—to your mild horror—raise their hand to lick one finger. 

"Wait, don't—" 

"D, it's fine." Dave shakes his head, pulling the red paint over to dip his brush in so he can detail the person-shaped yellow blob Rahnza's started. "Trolls don't do the whole getting sick from eating weird shit thing, especially not baby trolls." 

"Not a baby," all three of the kids chorus, and Dave laughs.

"Besides, this kind of paint is okay for _humans_ to eat. Even if it tastes like shit." 

"Thit," Zandyr lisps around the pencil they've found and are currently chewing on. 

Dave levels his paintbrush at them. "No swearing. Rules still apply when Kat's not around, otherwise you'll slip up and say it in front of him and I'll get my ass kicked." 

Gaudiu nudges you. You look down and see that they've drawn a wobbly but recognizable rump and scrawled "ASS" in bright pink paint. Dave looks over at you in mild concern when you choke on your own spit. 

Yeah, these kids are definitely related to you. No question about it.


	14. Kurloz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italics are sign language, bold text is telepathy.
> 
> Kurloz is not homeless, he just spends a lot of time in the park! I promise!

You are Kurloz Makara, and you are about to be forced to move to another part of the park. Well. Technically, not forced. There will be no consequences if you stay where you are, not beyond wary looks and, perhaps, adults gently redirecting offspring away from you. 

It's not even so much that they're afraid of you, on this world. They are, to some extent, and you don't mind the fear, but the looks you get are less fear for the skeleton tattooed on your skin and your stitched lips, and more...well, pity. And not the kind that might help you fill a quadrant. More the pity usually reserved for a domesticated hoofbeast that's been mistreated past the point of usefulness. 

Thinking about how others perceive you is one of your least favorite ways to pass the time. You sigh, glance around to see if anyone's noticed you yet, and get to your feet, patting the great tree you'd been sitting under and brushing the blossoms it's been dropping on you for the past hour or so off your shoulders and out of your hair. There's likely a dozen or so petals that you've missed, but you'll get them eventually. 

Before you can actually manage to slip off to somewhere where you can't hear multiple voices coming closer, though, two young trolls—a tiny yellowblood and a taller teal who makes you do a doubletake (fins? Those are fins, and gills, the former pierced with several sets of tiny silver rings. A seadweller. What the fuck?)—bolt out of the bushes, stopping dead when they see you. 

The yellow cocks their head, looking up at you, and you see their hands moving in very familiar patterns. You only catch half their signed sentence, though. _—looks like Fenrir._

"He's not related to any of us, Myr," the teal says quietly, signing as they talk. They glance up at you, blinking at the sight of your face, but just say, "You have a flower in your hair." 

_More than one flower,_ the yellowblood—Myr?—signs. _How come the tree has flowers, Rahnza? Aren't flowers supposed to be in the garden? We had flowers at home until the bugs ate them; did they take them here?_

"If you don't know, how am I gonna?" The teal rolls their eyes, tugging at Myr's sleeve. "C'mon, if we bother people we're gonna get in trouble and it's not nice anyway—"

You clear your throat, one of the few noises you can still make, and wait for the two of them to look up at you. Surprisingly, Myr looks without prompting—you'd thought them deaf, but they can obviously react to sounds. After a second of consideration, you sit down on the ground again, and start signing, rather than using your telepathy. _You aren't bothering me. Trees have flowers. Garden plants also have flowers. On this planet, flowers are nice and safe and don't usually harm you unless you eat them._

Rahnza is nodding, and Myr says out loud (but in that just-a-little-different tone that you're actually used to from someone else), "The ones here don't eat you but you shouldn't eat them without asking a grown-up first, right? Dave said." They grin up at you, adding with their hands, _Karkat says we can eat the kinds we saw him eating, and Sol says eat whatever we want, though. I'm Myrmyr. You look kind of like my sibling, but the wrong color._

_I am not your sibling._ You weren't aware that that human and that Alternian troll had offspring. And how in the name of the messiahs did they manage to produce a yellowblood, some kind of mutant seadweller, and—from what Myr just said—a highblood like you? _My name is Kurloz Makara._

"Kurloz," Rahnza says thoughtfully. "Karkat talks to Dave about somebody named Makara, but not you." 

_I'm not surprised._ You don't expect either of them to catch the dry amusement in your signed words, but Myrmyr giggles. _Did you get separated from your guardians, then?_ You don't particularly want to interact with any of the former Players, but these two children are surprisingly sweet, to the point where you find yourself feeling what's definitely some oddly strong form of affection for the little deaf yellow, and you suppose you're willing to undergo a few minutes of contact with others if Myr and Rahnza need to be returned to their adults. 

But Rahnza shakes their head. "Hal and Davepeta know where we are." 

_Did you get lost from_ your _people?_ Myrmyr signs, sitting down on the ground a few feet from you, completely ignoring Rahnza's attempt to pull them back to their feet. _We could look for them. Or get Arquius to look. He can find anything, he said so and then Grafii asked for their paintbrush and he found it and Xiophi asked for a big donut and he found_ that, _except he didn't really find it, he just got it and Xiophi wasn't supposed to get a donut but they ate the whole thing before Dave came back and then Xio had to go visit with Jade because they couldn't stop making my horns spark and it hurts when they make my horns spark and—_

This child is never going to stop talking, you realize with a faint sense of wonder. You take your eyes off Myrmyr for a second, and realize that Rahnza is watching you with a knowing smirk. 

_This is normal for them?_ you ask them, signing with your hands held at an angle that should mean Myrmyr won't notice. 

You get a nod in return. "This is _quiet_ Myrmyr." 

Hmm. Reminds you of a less-focused version of Kankri. 

_So,_ you sign to Rahnza, noticing that Myrmyr is watching your hands even if they're still signing to themself as well, _how many wrigglers did the Knights manage to produce, then?_

Myrmyr starts signing, mouthing the names that go with the hand motions, but Rahnza grins proudly and gives you an answer. "Twenty."

< **What.** > That comes out as telepathy. You can't really help it. 

It doesn't seem to phase either of the children, though. "Twenty- _two,_ " Myrmyr corrects, tilting their chin at Rahnza with the unmistakable expression of someone who's caught a friend in an obvious mistake. 

"Nuh-uh." And Rahnza shoots the look right back. "Twenty, plus us." 

You half-expect an attack from the yellowblood at that; they hiss and white sparks of psionics light around their horns and hair. You very nearly push them away from violence with your mind-control abilities, even though using those will light up alarms in at least two sets of surveillance systems, maybe making some very powerful people decide you're not as harmless as you've been trying to convince everyone you are. 

They'd exile you from Earth C for that. Or kill you. You've handled both states of being before. Neither is really fun. 

But your hesitation proves that intervention isn't really necessary, because Rahnza hisses back, still smiling, and they're the one to dive at Myrmyr. A second later both of them are scuffling in the flower petals in front of you, wrestling with each other for a minute before separating, scooping up handfuls of petals and throwing them at each other. 

You don't understand these kids, you decide. That decision is reinforced when they both start throwing petals at _you._

However, you don't actually have a problem with returning their attacks in kind. Rahnza is giggling and spitting out petals that you've tossed at them when you look up and see a familiar-ish red sprite watching you from maybe ten feet away. Arquius.

Even though he seems neither angry nor concerned, you decide that it's time to leave. Hopefully before that changes. You tap Myrmyr's shoulder, wait for Rahnza to realize there's no more floral missiles incoming, and sign, _Your guardian's here for you. Better go to him._

Myr groans. _We could just play with you?_ they sign hopefully. 

_Sorry. Maybe later. Ask your lusii._

"Parents," Rahnza corrects as you turn away. "Or dads." 

The chuckle caught in your throat surprises you.  < **All right. Ask them. I'll be in the park again if you look.** >

And you will. You like these kids. Strange.


	15. Fighting

By the time that Dave and Karkat come in and pull you and Fenrir off of each other, the scuffle's escalated into a fight. Your psionics are buzzing almost as painfully as the scratch on your neck, blotting out your ability to actually hear Fen's angry snarls. You know that they _are_ snarling at you, though; you can see their lips pulled back from their teeth, face all twisted up and furious at you and probably at Karkat too, for touching them. 

You hope it _hurts_ them, being held like that. Fenrir's nose has a trickle of bluish-purple blood dripping out of it from where you hit them; you wish you'd hit harder. 

Fenrir's saying something; you don't know what because your psionics _still_ haven't calmed down. You can't concentrate enough to read their lips, either, but they've got to be blaming you, saying this is your fault even though it isn't. And Karkat's listening, too, Dave's probably paying attention to Fen even though they aren't going to tell your side of the story, it isn't fair it's not fair it's not _fair—_

You hiss as loudly as you can. (You have no idea how loud that actually is, unfortunately.) You yank at Dave's hold on your wrists, and when that doesn't work you _push_ at Fenrir with your psionics, hating that they're so much weaker than Sollux's. _He_ could make your sibling shut up, but you just manage to make them yelp and snarl at you again. 

Huh. You "heard" that, though, from at least one mind. Karkat's, you think. Except it can't be Karkat, because the next thing you hear is, "Fuck. No. _No,_ fucking—" as Karkat lets go of Fen and takes a step back. Which isn't fair—Dave's still holding you back from trying to hit Fen again. 

"Karkat?" Dave asks quietly. He pulls you back a little, signs _Don't you dare start fighting again_ at you as he lets you go, and steps over to Karkat, who looks...horrified. You don't think you've ever seen him this upset. "Babe, what's wrong?" 

"I can't do this." He _sounds_ upset, too, shaking his head and closing his eyes as he backs up another step. "Dave, I can't, I can't fucking—it's like back there, on the fucking meteor—" 

"Shit." Dave looks from Karkat to Fenrir to you, chewing on his bottom lip. "Both of you go sit on the couch. Opposite ends. No talking, no touching." He says it with his hands as he says it out loud, making sure you understand. "If you start fighting again I swear to god I'll time-shift you both to where you _can't_ fight, do you understand?" 

You don't understand, no, but you nod anyway—the look on Dave's face and his tone are scaring you a little bit—and scramble to sit on one end of the couch as your dads leave the room. You very carefully do not look at Fenrir as they go to the other side and plop down. 

Sitting still has always been hard for you, that's just how you are. You resist the urge to fidget and squirm for not-very-long—maybe two minutes? It feels like two or three minutes, but it also feels like _forever_. Then you sigh and give up on keeping your legs still, and start talking to yourself with your hands. 

_Bad. It's bad. I was bad and they were bad and now Karkat's upset, Dave's mad at me. At us. Both of us? Both of us._ Karkat was very upset, you could tell. The memory of his expression connects with a word you had to use the dictionary for: _distress._ Your hands are repeating the word over and over again, and you can't make them stop. 

You glance over at Fenrir, and find them looking at you. They frown and turn their head to look away almost immediately, staring straight ahead. They've got their arms wrapped protectively around their chest, rocking just a little, and now you feel kind of bad that they're this upset. 

"Fenrir. Fen. _Fen,_ " you whisper until they look at you, remembering after you get their attention that Dave told you not to talk to each other. Okay, well, you'll sign instead. _Karkat's upset._

_Dave's mad,_ they sign back. _We're in so much trouble..._

_Karkat's really upset._ You know that you're just repeating yourself, but you don't know how to say what you're afraid of. And you are very afraid of something. 

From the look on Fen's face, so are they. _What if they send us back?_ they ask you silently. _What if they have us culled?_

_They don't cull here,_ you protest, and then clench your hands into fists instead of refuting the statement further. Sure, they don't, but what if? What if? What if he takes you back, to the caves you can just barely remember or to Somewhere Else that's worse, what if Karkat doesn't want you anymore and Dave takes you away and abandons you? What if? "Fenrir..." 

Their eyes widen as they realize you're about to cry, and they scoot closer, reaching for your hand and moving it to their chest so you can feel the vibration of them shushing you. They start papping your face with just the tips of their fingers, too. All in all this is substantially more contact than they'll normally allow. 

It's still not really enough to keep you from crying; you sniffle and blink and try to not grab Fen and hug them, hold onto them so even if Dave makes you go away you'll still have _somebody._ You want to hold them so much, even if that'd start another fight. 

No. No more fighting, uh-uh. _Sorry,_ you sign, taking your hand off Fenrir to do it. _Sorry, I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry—_

You'd probably just keep repeating that inadequate apology, except the door opens and you instinctively jump away from Fen as they jump away from you. You tuck your hands under your legs, try to wipe the guilty look off your face, and look up at the person who just entered. 

The guilty look doesn't matter, though, because it's Terezi. She shakes her head and uses her cane to navigate to the couch, sitting down between the two of you. "So how come Dave said you guys needed legal counsel, anyway?" she asks, balancing the cane on her knees and looking back and forth between the two of you. (Well, turning her head back and forth, anyway. You know she can't actually see you.) 

_We got in a fight,_ you sign. 

Fenrir snorts. "She can't see your hands, dummy," they point out. "We got in a fight. Myrmyr pushed me with their psionics, then Karkat _cried._ " 

"Kat-kat's—" What's the word? "Distressed. Because of us." 

"I can see why." Terezi leans toward you, sniffs, and shakes her head. "Purple and yellow again; you guys are lucky he didn't just have a breakdown." 

"He was crying," Fen says softly. 

Her eyebrows go up, further above her red-tinted glasses. "Ouch." 

_Are they going to—_ Wait. You still your hands and say it out loud, instead. "Are they going to make us go away?" 

"Oh gog no." Terezi immediately shakes her head. "Dave and Karkat wouldn't do that, Myrmyr." 

"Dave was _really_ mad," Fenrir points out. 

"Well, you upset Karkat." 

"How come?" You still don't really understand. You've gotten into worse fights with Raccon and Ferrus before, and those two had at least one fight that Jane had to come patch them up after. This isn't the worst argument that you and your sibs have had. 

Terezi sighs and leans back, running one hand through her short hair. "So have your dads told you about what happened before they ended up together? Like, how most of the adults you know actually died at one point or another?" 

"They played a game and made this world," Fen answers immediately. "That's how come Dave could go back in time and find all of us, 'cause he has Time powers from the game." 

"Right." Terezi nods. "And the game's still sending people who died to be alive again on Earth C—which is here." 

"Kankri," you say. "And D, and Kurloz." 

"Yep, and a lot of the others too. But see, two of Karkat's friends—a yellowblood like you, Myr, and a violet seadweller—" 

"That's not like me." 

"Yeah, Fenrir, I know, but purple's pretty close to violet, c'mon—they got into a fight with each other, and one died and the other _almost_ died. They were Karkat's friends, and he blames himself for not being able to stop it." She frowns at you, then at Fenrir, whose bottom lip is trembling. "So _that's_ why he's upset, probably. And Dave gets mad when Karkat's upset, you guys know that." 

"Mad at us," you whisper. 

"Oh my gog. No, Myrmyr, he's not really mad at you—" Terezi's still trying to explain what she means, but you don't want to listen. He _is_ mad at you, he is, and instead of listening you reach up and wrap your hands around the bases of your horns, squeezing your eyes shut in an ineffective attempt to keep the tears in your eyes from falling, as your telepathy cuts out and leaves everything perfectly silent. 

And everything is silent for what kind of seems like a long time, until Dave scoops you up off the couch and hugs you to his chest. The movement drags your hands away from your horns, and you hear what Dave's hearing, a combination of Terezi _still_ talking, her tone a lot more concerned than before, and Fenrir sobbing. (Which is probably your fault for crying and setting them off. Now you feel _worse._ ) 

_I'm sorry,_ you sign to Dave, and you're trying to say it out loud but you're pretty sure the words aren't coming out right. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wouldn't kill Fenrir, I promise I promise I promise—_

"I know, Myr, I know." He nods and pats your hands, and you can feel the vibration of him saying something to Fenrir as you hide your face in his shirt. 

When you hold out your hand without looking, Fen presses their fingertips against yours. At least they're not mad at you anymore. 

Eventually, when you've almost stopped crying, Dave pulls you back so he can look at you. "Terezi said you guys were afraid we'd make you go away?" he asks gently. 

You just nod, because you can't quite remember how to talk, but Fenrir says, "We're sorry...we don't wanna be culled. Please. Sorry." 

_Sorry._ You free up your hands for just long enough to sign the one word, then wrap your arms around Dave's neck again. 

"Fuck." He sighs and reaches out one hand to Fenrir, stroking your hair with the other. "Guys, we'd never do that to you. _Never._ No matter how much trouble you get in."

"I wouldn't ever kill Fen," you tell him, very carefully. 

Dave snorts and kisses the top of your head. "Good." 

"Tell Kat-kat?" 

"He knows, sweetheart. It's okay." 

You nod and press your face against Dave's shirt again. You need the comfort, at least for a minute.


	16. The Loyalist (Beforus Eridan)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which I probably just fucking disregard actual canon for the Beforus ancestors, if we have any)
> 
> Also I found the BEST art of him [here](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/175354487446/arkytior-foreman-secretarybird-eridan-become) so go check that out!

Your name is...hm. 

You're not entirely sure. 

That's worrisome. Especially when you take the fact that your head aches badly enough to make you reach up and check your horns for cracks, carefully running your hands along the dips and edges, smoothing your hair back down away from the horns themselves. Well, at least your horns don't seem to be damaged, and neither does your skull. 

You sit up, taking careful note of the relatively soft green plants beneath you—some kind of grass, but not anything from Beforus—and carefully brush dirt off your cape, taking an inventory of what you know right now. 

Not your first name, unfortunately. However, you know you're an Ampora, violetblooded seadweller who hasn't bothered to live in the ocean where you belong for almost half your lifespan. Self-imposed exile, it might be called, except for that Her Imperial Radiance rewards you for being her emissary to the lowbloods—it's one of the reasons you carry the title of Loyalist, after all. 

But your duties emphatically do _not_ include leaving Beforus. You can't leave the planet, actually, you have Fef's word that she won't make you, because you have...

"Fuck," you breathe, rolling to your feet without thinking about the movement and almost staggering because the gravity here is just a touch greater than the planet you were born on. "The _grubs._ " 

You can _feel_ your fins flare in alarm, thinking about the complement of orphaned grubs that you'd taken on after their lusii were devoured by Her Imperial Radiance's lusus. Yes, of course your servants would care for them, but what if they _don't_? What if they assume you're—

"Oh, _fuck,_ " you hear yourself say. It sounds amazingly far away, and the logically reasoning part of your brain suggests that you've just managed to possibly tip yourself over into some kind of shock. Which isn't really surprising, given that you remember dying. 

Well. 

You can't have died, since you're alive. 

But you have a _very_ clear memory of metal ripping into your torso, the sharp taste of your own violet blood flooding your mouth from organs torn and ruptured too badly to ever function. Blinking and seeing that your body was in two pieces, everything drenched in purple, _your_ purple—

"Hi," somebody says, and you shake your head to clear the memory and look down. Quite far down, actually. 

The "somebody" is a little oliveblood, not too far past their first pupation, with a big sharp-toothed grin, hair almost as fluffy as the Heirophant's when he actually brushes it out, if a good deal shorter, and round horns that almost get lost in said hair. Even though they're too old for you to simply adopt—you can only take grubs, if they're orphaned any later there's no way they'll bond with you—you still feel a stab of pity for a kid with a lusus negligent enough to not teach them how poor a plan approaching seadwellers uninvited is. 

"Hello to you too," you tell them, kneeling down and sitting back on your heels to bring yourself closer to their level. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what planet we're on?" 

They nod, grinning even bigger. "Earth C!" 

"...Earth?" What? You're almost certain that Beforus doesn't have a colony on that planet. It's too far away, and it's _inhabited._

"Uh-uh." The kid shakes their head, holding up three fingers. "C. Earth C. Dave-dad says there was more Earths, but then there wasn't. Now there's _this_ Earth, and we _all_ live here." They tilt their head, shifting from foot to foot with a soft clinking sound, and you realize that they're damaged—one leg's supported with some kind of brace, and so is the arm on that side. That might explain why no one's keeping a close eye on them... "I'm Nonomi...are you _new_?" 

"I guess so." The emphasis Nonomi puts on that word suggests it has greater meaning, something specific, but you don't know what it is. "I'm, erm." Name. Goddamnit. What the hell is it? 

You try to remember, and wince as the only thing that comes to mind is _him_ screaming at you, too-bright-red eyes wide and frustrated not at you but at...something. You don't remember why he was upset, just like you can't remember his name. Damn. 

He said _your_ name, though, and you do remember that now. 

"My name is Eridan," you tell Nonomi. "...although on Beforus you'd be better off simply referring to me as the Loyalist." 

They just shrug, looking you over for a second. "Eridan's shorter." 

"...excuse me?" 

"Eridan's _shorter,_ " they repeat patiently, and stretch up to pat your hair. (You're too startled to protest.) "And the purple in his hair sticks up more." 

" _I'm_ Eridan." 

"There's another one." They giggle, covering their mouth with both hands. "He gives us swimming lessons, except he doesn't like staying under like Rahnza can." 

"Rahnza?" 

"Mhm. My sib." 

"Sib. Sibling?" When they nod, you just get more bewildered. You know the concept of siblings, but that's not a _troll_ thing. Each lusus cares for one grub, one troll, at a time; some take more than one over the course of their lives, but they certainly don't have more than one at once! "What sort of lusus do you _have_?" 

Nonomi frowns for a second, then just shrugs. "Don't." 

"What do you mean?" 

"We have dads. Dave-dad and Karkat-dad—" 

They keep talking and you lose the rest of the sentence due to the jolt of recognizing that name. Karkat—that was the birth name of the one who used to rant at you when he was upset, wasn't it? You _definitely_ remember him. There's no way you could forget pulling him down into the pile of blankets you kept for that sole purpose, putting a purring grub in his lap and sitting next to him until the candy-red flush faded out of his face and he sighed and leaned against you.  
...and apparently he's here? That can't possibly be right. Mutants aren't allowed to travel like that. 

"Are you okay?" Nonomi asks, grabbing at your hand to get your attention. 

"...of course I am." You're so confused. 

"Are you like Eridan like D's like Dave-dad?" 

"I have no idea." 

Nonomi huffs and holds up both their hands, index fingers pointed up at the blue sky. "Dave." They hold out their left hand a little farther forward. " _Still_ Dave—" Right hand. "—except not, 'cause he came from the other universe, like Kankri came from Beforus but Signless came from Alternia, but they're the _same._ Except not." 

"...what." You really need someone who's seven sweeps or older to explain what the hell Nonomi's talking about. "Erm. You said you didn't have a lusus...so, is there someone who takes care of you? An adult troll?" 

"Karkat-dad is, but Dave-dad's human." 

"Uh." You don't know what a human is. "Can you take me to them?" 

"Yeah!" Nonomi's whole face lights up, and they grab your hand again, trying to pull you up to your feet. It's adorably ineffective, and you start missing _your_ grubs and young trolls again. "C'mon!" 

You nod and get back to your feet, gently wrapping your hand around theirs when they reach for you and letting them lead you. After maybe ten steps, two more kids—one a blueblood with a scarred face and obviously blind eyes, and merciless fucking angels the other one is a _magenta_ seadweller, what the _hell_ —dash up, the latter glancing at you curiously before focusing on Nonomi. "Dave's _looking_ for you," they announce, hands going to their hips. "Who's that?" 

The blue hasn't taken their blind eyes off you; it's a little uncomfortable even though you know they're not seeing you. When the magenta asks, they answer softly, "Eridan Ampora, the Lu—Loyalist?" 

"That's right." You can't fault them for stumbling over pronunciation; hell, the fact that they somehow know your name at all is surprising. "I, um. I believe I'm lost." 

"Hi Lost, I'm Zandyr," the magenta says, and laughs. 

"Delphi," the blue offers, giving you a tentative but amazingly sweet smile. 

"He wants to see Dave-dad," Nonomi tells the others. 

"Good," Delphi says, and reaches for your other hand. 

...okay, if these kids didn't have good guardians, you would _definitely_ take them into your care. Fuck your usual age limits. They're so sweet, they need someone to protect them. You could definitely do that. Just fucking rip anyone who threatens them apart. 

You really hope that you'll be able to either get back to your own kids or find some more to care for, because your lusus tendencies are showing quite badly right now. 

"Who's your new friend?" somebody asks, and you look up from Zandyr to see...okay, what the hell. That's an alien. He's almost the right basic shape to be a troll, but where the hell are his horns? And how the fuck does any being function when they're that _pale_ , hair and skin, instead of normal black and grey? 

Delphi lets go of your hand and runs over to him, holding up their arms to be picked up, and he grins and obliges. "Nonomi met _Eridan,_ Dave-Dave," they tell him solemnly. 

"Eridan?" The alien—Dave, didn't Nonomi say Dave was a human?—raises an eyebrow, looking you over. "...huh. Just as a question, do you remember...any weird shit?" 

"Like dying?" You carefully free your hand from Nonomi's grip so you can cross your arms, nodding at Dave. "Yes, actually. Care to explain?" 

"Guess I pulled welcoming committee duty, so..." Dave grins, shifting Delphi's weight onto his hip and settling them more comfortably. "Greetings, my name's Dave Strider, Knight of Time and 'king—'" he sketches quotes in the air with the hand that's not supporting Delphi— "—of the Troll Kingdom. On behalf of everybody else, I welcome you to Earth C." 

"Uh..." There's probably a proper response, and you probably know what it is. Instead of figuring out _what_ it is, you sigh and tell him, "I still have no goddamn clue what's going on." 

Dave just laughs and sets Delphi down again. "Yeah, that's normal. C'mon, we've got a presentation and shit for people like you." 

"I wanna help show him," Nonomi announces. 

"You can, I promise." Dave holds his hand, but it's Zandyr that grabs it. 

Nonomi tugs on your cape until you reach down and give them your hand. They follow Dave, and you let them lead you, and even though you're quite obviously not exactly where you belong and you're pretty sure you died, you can't help but like this state of affairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp now I want to write about Beforus Eridan<>Beforus Karkat and/or him with grubs lmao

**Author's Note:**

> Want more? You can also read about [Zandyr getting their first chewy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14804781)! (Drop that fic some love; it's amazing and fits into this fic _so_ well.)


End file.
